1Co 14:24 But if all prophesy, and if an unbeliever or an uninformed person comes in, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all:
Note the word “all”. Over and over we see the word all. And again in verse 31 we are told “for you can all prophesy that all may learn and all may be encouraged. Six times in two verses the Scriptures hammer home the truth “all.” Genuine saints are all priests in a royal priesthood. We are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people;that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light! (1 Pet 2:9) All the saints have been called forth to cry out the praises of the One who called us out of darkness to show the world His marvelous light. We are His excellent ones. Specifically anointed to move under the manifestation of the Spirit and speak as He leads us to speak. And when we do as we are instructed to do , then, according to the Scriptures the unlearned or the unbeliever will fall down on his face and worship God because the secrets of his heart was revealed and he shall then reports to all that “God is truly among you.”
This is the plain reading of the scripture saints. To do it any other way is to be in direct conflict with God. To sit under the clergy/laity system is to directly violate the principles and the instructions here laid down by God Himself. What audacity to think we know better. The greatest injury perpetrated against the Church was robbing the Body of its fellowship, of its actual breaking of bread, its communion together. How it fellowshiped together, how it gathered together, how it worshiped together under the auspices of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, who oversaw, who hovered over all things, all of this was rejected by the professional clergy. To wait upon the Lord so that only He speaks, is the simple gathering of the brethren. Let us wait upon the Lord. Who shall He speak through? What shall He say? How will He encourage us? How will He discipline us? What song shall He have us to sing? The Holy Spirit knows all this and empowers all of this by being manifested among us through “all.” Not one man.
The devil himself has worked feverishly over the centuries through religious hands to tear down what is real and erect empty meaningless rituals that are then idolized. The modern day church is like a ship at sea that has lost its power and is now driven by the winds and the tides and the currents of the world. Lost and drifting, waiting to be swamped by the next big wave, the next modern thing, the next hellish doctrine of the world. And yet the true Body of believers are still operating under power, the power of the Holy Spirit manifesting Himself in our lives. The day is coming soon saints, when the pressures from a very hostile world will draw us back together. The weak will fall away, the feeble will fall away. Lovers of the world more than lovers of the Lord will fall away. Little by little the saints are being purged from the world and this is good, the hand of the Lord Himself is doing this. We shall come back together, and we shall worship as we have read in 1 Cor 14. The great persecution will soon be upon us but the gathering of the saints takes place at the same time. We shall truly be united in our sufferings and in the persecution. And there we shall find the same power that stopped the mouths of lions, that overcome the fiery furnace, that shook the prison and turned the whole world upside down.
1Co 14:37 If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.
I will probably have a couple of devotionals on this chapter. I believe it to be one of the most important “chapters,” in the NT. Nowhere else do we have such a description of an early gathering service. Paul clearly states that what he is saying in regard to these matters is ” commandments of the Lord.” He further states that if you believe that you are a ” prophet or spiritual,”or leaders among the brethren then you must acknowledge the things of which he has just written about. And what has he just written about? He has just relayed to us “commandments of the Lord,” as to how a service should be conducted. To ignore Paul in this is to actually ignore God. He ends the chapter just as he begins it by saying “therefore brethren , desire earnestly to prophecy and do not forbid to speak with tongues. Let all things be done decently and in order.”
Before I begin to talk about the manifestation of the Spirit among us in the service, in all its many demonstrations, we must speak to the purpose of it all. The purpose of the manifestation of the Spirit among us in the service is primarily for edification. The word edification or to edify is mentioned five times in this one chapter. Those who come to Christ must be fed. We know that God Himself fed the children of Israel in the desert. Manna fell from heaven and water poured forth from the Rock. If it were not for the supernatural hand of God, all of the children of Israel would have starved in very short order or returned to Egypt. Now, in the NT God also feeds His children, and just as the children of Israel in the desert, we too shall die if He does not feed us or we shall turn to the world. We must be edified. He who prophecies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men.( 1 Cor 14:3) For he who prophecies is greater than he who speaks with tongues, unless indeed he interprets that the gathering may receive edification. (1 Cor 14:5) Even so, since you are zealous for spiritual gifts, let it be for the edification of the gathering. (1 Cor 14:12) Let all things be done for edification. (1 Cor 14:26)
So brothers and sisters, you see the clear purpose of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit among us as we gather. It is to edify us. To feed us, to build us up. To strengthen us. If we are not edified then we are not fed. If we reject the clear commandments of God then we are not fed. A intellect will not nourish your body, it needs to be fed spiritual food. God has, in His great wisdom, laid out how we shall be fed and from what source we shall be fed from. He is the source. He alone. We are not building up the intellect, we are strengthening the inner man. The spiritual man. And He can only be fed in the prescribed manner. Jesus says to the devil in the garden that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds forth from the mouth of God. And so our singular source of spiritual food comes from the Word of God and the mouth of God. And how then does this happen? By the manifestation of the Spirit in our midst when we gather. He edifies through the prophet. He edifies through the word of knowledge. He edifies through the word of wisdom. He edifies through the interpreted tongue. He edifies through the Word. He edifies through a teaching. He edifies us in worship as we sing praises unto Him. In all these things, and more, He speaks to us and His words are life. They feed the deepest parts of who we are that we may rise up and be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. It is by His Spirit alone we are fed. To reject this is to starve.
Isa 40:4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places smooth.
In the previous verse we see that the prophet, not just this prophet, but the role of the prophet is to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The wilderness is a world without God. A world that has rejected God and the highway that makes its way through the wilderness is established by God through His prophets and by the Blood of Christ Himself. This highway is the Holy Highway of the saints. John the Baptist would famously repeat the words of the prophet Isaiah in John 1:23. John was in the wilderness crying out the message of repentance, He was making the way for His Lord to come in this sense. We too saints are ones crying in the wilderness. We too are a light that dwells in the darkness who cry out to a world lost in sin to repent for the Lord is coming.
Those who walk along the valley floor, along the Highway of Holiness that runs through the wilderness of sin and death and rejection of God, shall be exalted up into the high places of our God where He dwells with the broken and the contrite. For thus says the Lord, I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones( Isa 57:15) Every mountain and hill or any high thing that exalts itself against the Lord our God shall be brought low. The proud shall indeed be humbled as the glory of the Lord is revealed. The crooked places, the lies, the deceit the vain imaginations of men and all arguments that exalt itself above the Lord shall be made straight as the signs of His coming begin to appear.
All flesh is grass and its beauty is like the the flowers of the field. The world and all who dwell in it fade away. Only by the very breath of God are all things maintained. The one thing that remains is the Word of God and it stands forever. He is coming and and the nations shall discover they are as a drop in bucket. They will faint and lose heart as they begin to understand that it is God Himself that stretches out the heavens like a curtain. He brings the proud and elite men of this world to nothing. The Lord blows upon them and they wither in the whirlwind and are taken away like stubble in the wind. Yet to those who walk along the highway of Holiness, He increases their strength. He dwells with the lowly of heart and renews them. They shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not faint and they indeed shall rise up with wings like eagles and fly to the high and holy place where the spirit of the humble is revived.
Have you ever stood beneath a violent storm? The lightening fractures the sky above and sends down bolts that touch earth and sky. The ground shakes as the thunder roars. The dark clouds swirl in violent contortions. Tornado’s begin to form as the earth is battered by giant hailstones. The immensity of the power that surrounds you overwhelms you. Have you ever been caught up in a storm as sea? Waves of tremendous power rise to towering heights and fall with unspeakable power. The wind howls as it drives the waves into a frenzy and the noise is deafening. You quickly understand your place in this world. Fear and humility course through your veins.
When a man encounters God he is quite simply undone. Everything he knows about himself convicts him in an instant. His very existence crumbles as he encounters the immensity of God. He falls to floor as if dead. He is man and God is God. He dare not speak unless he is spoken to. He understands that the very voice of God, a single word could totally destroy both body and soul. Does this God offend you? This is the God of the Bible. Not a kindly grandfather with silver hair. Not the “man upstairs.” He is God and you are man and when man encounters His Majesty then you are undone. In Christ alone we stand. In Christ alone we are ushered before the throne. In Christ alone we are swallowed up in the glory. Christ is the fire from the altar that has refined us and given us voice before Majesty.
God’s righteousness reflects upon our humanity. The righteousness of Christ in us reflects upon a a dark world untouched by the glory of God. Is there a fire that burns within you brothers and sisters and does the fire light up the dark deeds of this world? Does it reflect upon the shadows and the shades of grey? There is but one reason for the fire, one reason for the light. We have been called to go into the darkness of the valley. This world is the valley of the shadow of death. Yet we fear no evil, for we are bearers of the light. He has restored our souls and He leads us in the paths of righteousness for His name sake. In an ever darkening world, remember your calling brothers and sisters.
Isa 22:13 Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!
In the beginning of this chapter we see these first words “The burden against the Valley of vision.” What is this valley of vision? It is Jerusalem, surrounded by mountains and filled with prophets. A once bustling prosperous city, now quieted by the march of the Assyrians. The streets are no longer bustling with commerce, everyone has taken to their rooftops to contemplate their fate as the Assyrians devastate the surrounding regions and other nations. The valley of vision would soon become the valley of decision. What would they decide? Would they weep and mourn for the coming judgement or would they throw all caution to the wind and “eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” This is the cry of mockers down through the ages and when a nation or nations take up that mantle then the end is surely in sight.
Paul says in 1 Cor 15:32 “If the dead do not rise let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” If there is no resurrection, if there be no eternal life, if Christ was but a man who died, then this life and this life alone is all that matters. And if that were true then why would the inhabitants of the earth not make every attempt to live their best lives now? Can I argue dear saint that this is exactly the state of the world? And what a great tragedy that in a nation of vision, meaning a nation that knows the truth, that has been taught the truth, that has indeed been blessed by the truth, that this very nation would be the foremost nation in eating and drinking and being merry for they see no eternal tomorrow.
Isa 22:2 “Your slain men are not slain by the sword.” Imagine the horror of being dead but not being dead. It is said that the brave man dies one but the coward dies a thousand times. Our nation is a nation of slain men. Fear stalks the streets. A virus has shut down our commerce andour industry but its not really the virus at all that has shut the wheels of commerce down, it is the fear that stalks men’s hearts, they die every day. Cowards led by cowards. Men without faith, men given over to the world, men who should know better. The Assyrians drew ever closer to Jerusalem and commerce began to dry up and food became scarce in the cities. Can you see it saints? Can you see the hearts of men today?
Now after all of this men should contemplate their fate. They should call out to God. They should fall on their faces in mourning and weeping and repentance. The should decide. They have the Word, they have the Truth among them, now, shall they weep? God calls for weeping and for mourning but strangely He hears joy and gladness. Not the joy and gladness of a people at rest and at peace with God, but the kind of joy that comes when men have thrown of God and made a decision about their fate. They shall eat, they shall drink and the drink will cause the fool to be merry even as that same fool stands under the shadow of the gathering clouds.
Joel 2:1 Blow a rams horn in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain; let all the inhabitants of the land tremble. For the day of Jehovah comes, for it is near at hand.
So brothers and sisters, do likewise. Blow the trumpet. In Joels day they lost everything to a devastating plague of locusts. Not an ordinary plague, a devastating supernatural plague designed to call the people to repentance. In the last 20 years we have seen 9/11, a tsunami that was unknown in our times or our history books, Hurricane Katrina and then a financial meltdown that took the world to the brink. We have had wars in the middle east and now a pandemic. In Joels day they had just over 30 years before they were invaded and destroyed. They did not heed this warning from the prophet or even the judgment. They managed to get back on their feet again, just in time to be destroyed. We are laboring under the same illusion, just trying to get back to “normal.’ The decision is this. Weep and mourn and cry out to the Living God, or eat and drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. You shall surely die for all men die, but the fool dies eternally.
Could the Chinese be the Assyrians? Could America be swept up in civil war? I hear the howls of protest. “We have fortified our walls, we are too strong.” “We are far too sophisticated to ever again be destroyed by civil war.” Wrong on both accounts. There is no “fortifications,’ that cannot be brought down. Isa 19:14 The LORD hath mingled a perverse spirit in the midst thereof: and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit. Even now the hearts of Americans are turned on each other. How much more would it take for them to tear themselves apart? It is mere pride that says these things can never be. Think of how it staggered the minds of the Apostles to learn that not one stone would be left un-turned in the destruction of Jerusalem. And Jesus wept. It is better for men to weep over their own fate for in the weeping they may find a way back to God. But when God weeps for man……woe is man. Decide today whom you will serve.
The time has come once again to hear the voice of God. through His prophets. A prophet is not cultivated but called and sent by God. One of my passions is to see God once again at the center of His church-to see Him honored and glorified in such a manner that it will push out all the things that are contrary to God. We have bred a generation that is far removed from those who have gone before us and is almost indistinguishable as being related to them. We have a generation of sons of the prophets( think of Eli) that is more interested in the accoutrements of the message than in the inner reality of the message.
How entertaining was it for Stephen to die in the presence of his enemies? How entertaining was it for the martyrs of the church to march to their martyrdom? Who was applauding all of this? Who was being entertained by the sufferings and sacrifices of the church? The sons of the prophets have created a generation of pseudo-Christians who bear little or no resemblance to those early Christians who died for their faith. The sons of the prophets are careful to leave out the offensive parts . They are very selective about the truths they present. What they present is true, but what they leave out is devastating.
There seems to be no condemnation elements in the church anymore. Conviction has lost its place and no one is calling the church to repentance. There is nothing to repent for anymore. We are God’s happy happy little children dancing our way into heaven. What a pathetic description. The message depends upon celebrities to carry it into the culture. No other generation needed celebrities. Could it be that we need help from celebrities, especially from those who have never experienced a life changing relationship with Jesus Christ and who have lifestyles completely contrary to Biblical standards? ( A.W.Tozer)
Here Tozer bemoans the sons of the prophets. This generation that is weak and anemic that was passed down from weak and anemic previous generations. One can only imagine what he would make of what we see today. Where is the burning heart of the church today? Where is the fire for the incredible truths that we present? Where is the militancy of the church of old? On every side we are surrounded by a hostile culture but rather than confront that culture our aim seems to placate it. Rather than running towards Goliath we are running away from the fight. Where is that indignation that burned in David today? Why are our shirts not rent and why are we not covered in dust and ashes? Where is the fire of Stephen and where are those who would willingly give up everything they have in support of the Truth that lies trampled in the streets?
“Oh but we do not want to upset anyone.” Words of cowards and what is worse those cowards then turn their cowardice into a virtue. It is rotten to the core and it stinks to the high heavens. That stench has surely come before the throne. This generation, you sons of the prophets who stand upon the shoulders of your forefathers, why should you be allowed to carry the banner of Christ? What will God do with a pseudo-generation of Christians? Shall He not give them over to a reprobate mind? He shall. Stand on the truth or be swallowed up by the muck and the mire of a world in total rebellion to God. Decide today where you stand and who you stand with. You cannot stand with one foot in the world and one foot in the Kingdom. You will fall headlong into the chasm that is at this very moment turning into a canyon as wide as any canyon on earth.
The wounds of the prophet’s heart are too numerous to count. A man or woman who has stood in the throne-room of the living God, who has cried out ” I am undone,’ who has been penetrated to his or her very core can never walk the world as they once did. Everything illuminated by the light of God is a terrible weight on the soul.
A mountain of magnificent Truth ever lies before such a saint and everything that assaults that Truth is felt in the inner man like the blow of a blunt instrument. It wounds, it breaks it pains the heightened awareness of the awakened soul. Truth courses through the veins like molten rock, a fire that consumes the bones. Will he or she speak? Can it remain in the heart? It can only guarantee more blows, yet this fire cannot be contained. It seeks relief.
The Lord shakes the earth, but not just the earth, He shakes the very heavens.Shall we resist the shaking, shall we refuse the voice that speaks in the midst of the shaking? What now is the Spirit saying to His Church? He is removing all things from His Church that can be shaken, only that which cannot be shaken shall remain. Our God is a consuming Fire.
It is well for us to consider here that religious people are prone to select a favorite Bible doctrine or truth and to hold to that one truth at the expense of other basic tenets. We may overemphasize important truths so as to obscure other important truth which may actually disappear as a result. This is what I mean by a truth disappearing-it falls into disuse and therefore is easily forgotten. I would illustrate this.
Suppose there is one key on the piano that is not properly attached and it gives forth no sound when it is struck. The pianist is sure to be wincing when he strikes that key and nothing happens. If you would photograph the keyboard, that key would be in its proper place in the picture, but it will not produce any sound no matter how hard you touch it. That is an illustration of what I mean by a basic doctrine of the Christian faith that has fallen into disuse, so that it is not longer talked about or thought about or preached about. If you go to the book of discipline , the statement of doctrine, you will find it still in its place because it will say that we do firmly hold this truth.
But it no longer plays-it is no longer heard. It has no emphasis and no power because it is slurred over and forgotten. This is how a basic Bible truth may fall into disuse because certain doctrines have been overemphasized to the obscuring of others. Then, finally some prophet of God has to come and reassert the forgotten truths and reemphasize and trumpet them forth. That person be considered a heretic because that segment of Bible truth has been obscured for generations. But in the midst of grumbling, the prophet of God keeps persisting until the church awakes, readopts that truth, so that a sense of life comes as if it were raised from the dead. (A.W.Tozer)
Tozer is here speaking in profound terms. Luther would be an example of this, he did not invent a new doctrine when he announced that we are justified by faith alone and not of works. He rediscovered it and presented it to a church that had long ago forgotten this most fundamental and vital aspect of what it means to be saved. Many centuries before this most basic and fundamental truth was lost in religiosity and liturgy. Century after century Christendom slowly drifted away, each generation losing something from the previous generation until they were totally adrift from the truth. Once they were totally adrift from the truth then more centuries past affirming and confirming their error. Then comes Luther and as he hammered that nail into the door, the whole of Christendom shook. A bloody revolution then ensued as the keepers of the error and the status quo fought with all of their might against this upstart priest of no account who was challenging their religion and their liturgy. I believe a similar revolution would have to take place in order to rediscover the truths of 1 Cor 14 and how we interact in gatherings. The sign gifts and their purpose of edifying the saints and the unsaved and the unlearned have fallen into disuse and have been forgotten.
The next word is that which is best translated, I think, into our English word with which we have become sadly familiar in recent days – a refugee; the essence of this word is that. It means one who has left a region of desolation and found refuge from desolation – a fine thought for Overcomers. It is possible to know spiritual desolation even amongst the people of God, to know desolation of heart even in the Christian Church. So many write to us and speak to us – ‘The place where I attend is a desolation, there is no food, there is no life, it is all barren and dead; what are we to do?’ And that is a Christian church, so called; a Christian circle. Yes, we say it quietly because we do not gloat over that; it is the opposite of that that is in our thought. We have to take note of facts, and these are facts, that there is spiritual desolation today in Christendom and often even in evangelical circles; starvation and death, and the Overcomer, the remnant, are those who have left that region of desolation spiritually and have found food, come into life, into wealth, into spiritual affluence, who have found the realm of heart satisfaction. That is how it was at the beginning.” (T.A.Sparks)
“I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.”— John Wesley
“Preaching truth without the anointing of the Holy Ghost is helping the devil to damn souls. There’s nothing on earth today so deadening as preaching without heaven’s anointing. Refrain from preaching unless you know that the dew of heaven is on your soul.” — Duncan Campbell
I watched a nature program one time about an African country that had a very short rainy season. Long before the year was over, the rivers had dried up to a series of mere muddy pools. It showed that some of the animals set of in epic journeys to find life sustaining water, most stayed behind and died. God’s saints will find water, they are the few that will get up and seek Him where He shall be found. Those that stay behind slowly die as even the mud holes dry up and the land is scorched and the drought takes it’s toll.
Excerpts from David Wilkerson’s prophecy which is now 40 years old.
I see the rise of a super world church. I see the formation of a super world church council consisting of a union between liberal, ecumenical Protestants, and the Roman Catholic Church joining politically hand-in-hand to create one of the most powerful religious forces on earth. This union is going to start as a cooperative charity program and it will end in a political union. This visible super world church is going to be spiritual in name only, freely using the name of Jesus Christ, but will in fact be antichrist and political in many of its activities. This powerful church union will be deeply involved in social action, tremendous charity programs, and ministries of compassion. Its leaders will make statements about meeting human needs. They will send out a call for social action, political intervention, and a greater voice in world affairs.
There is going to be a sudden mysterious chain of events. Just when it appears the ecumenical movement is nearly dead, a rather mysterious chain of events will bring about the framework for this union. Rome is going to insist on and receive concessions from the Protestant ecumenical leaders. The Pope will be considered more of a political than a spiritual leader of this church union.
I see the rise of a super church, a supernatural invisible church, a union of deeply spiritual followers of Jesus Christ, bound together through the Holy Spirit and mutual confidence in Christ and in his word.
This supernatural church of true believers will become a kind of underground church.
While this visible super church(apostate) gains political power this invisible body of believers will grow tremendously in spiritual power.
This power will come from persecution. The persecution madness that is coming upon this earth will drive these Christians closer together and closer to Jesus Christ. They will be less concerned about denominational ties and more concerned and emphasis on the coming of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit will bring together as one people in all walks of life.
There is a wall spoken of in Ezekiel 13:10-16. The wall is constructed upon false-hood and lies. Lying prophets who tell the people what they want to hear. They cry peace and prosperity where there is no peace and their prosperity is the gold and silver of this world. Their gold and silver and jewels are truly wood, hay and stubble and it shall surely come to nothing when the Lord comes against this wall.
There are many who plaster this wall and they do so with ” untempered mortar.” Now, I laid bricks for over 25 years. In the beginning, when I was an apprentice, we went to a trade school. In that trade school, which was indoors, we built many beautiful structures. We built egg-shaped sewers and Gothic arches and so on and we perfected all the finer points of constructing beautiful structures. If you were to walk into the large room where we were hard at work, you would see some of the finest examples of brickwork to be found. The untrained eye would not notice and really could not notice that the mortar between the bricks was only sand and lime, it was untempered, it had no cement. When the project was finished it was simply and easily taken down and the material would be scraped off and used again. If it were outside, it would last to a certain degree but if a storm or rain were to hit it, the structures would simply collapse on themselves as the mortar that held everything together never set and had no actual strength to withstand the weather or shaking.
This is the kind of wall that Ezekiel is talking about in Chapter 13. Christendom itself is just like this wall. It has been constructed by false prophets and the mortar used to hold it all together is religiosity. It gives a beautiful appearance and it encompasses a stronghold, but the time is coming soon when the Lord Himself will come against this structure. The Lord Himself will cause a storm designed specifically to bring the structure down. This is just like Matthew 7:26 where the Lord talks about two houses. One is built upon a foundation of Truth, that is Jesus, and the other has no foundation at all, it is merely built on sand. Now, in the normal course of events no one would ever know what house had a foundation or which did not, until a storm comes and beats against the house and it falls and great is the fall of that house, yet the house that stands upon Jesus alone, weathers the storm.
This storm is coming brothers and sisters. In fact the fore-winds have already begun to blow. There will be a flooding rain, great hailstones shall fall and a “stormy wind shall tear it down.” Tear what down and expose what? The great wall of religion and denominationalism shall soon be exposed as the birth pangs begin to intensify. God always has a remnant of people who dwell outside the walls, outside the systems of men who are witnesses and who testify of the truth. Indeed, as Stephen says , God does not dwell in temples built by human hands. God’s kingdom dwells within the hearts of His children. His structures consist of living stones. These living stones together, is the temple of God.
This great storm of darkness that is descending upon the world is designed to leave only the true children of God standing, and by standing I mean never faltering, standing fast to the end , prevailing, enduring and overcoming. That which is without the foundation of Jesus, which is constructed by untempered mortar will not stand and by not standing I mean shall falter, shall not stand fast unto the end, shall not prevail, shall not endure and shall not overcome rather shall be overcome by the great fall of the world and will be destroyed in the midst of this great fall when God moves. Finally that untempered wall shall be no more when the climax of the storm comes, when Jesus Himself shall descend in all His glory with the saints with a shout of glory and triumph. Those saints still alive after the final martyrs have been slaughtered shall arise and join Christ and His army in the air, that glorious army of saints who come with Christ and then every knee shall bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God.
“Let me go out on a limb a little bit and prophesy. I see the time coming
when all the holy men whose eyes have been opened by the Holy Spirit will
desert worldly Evangelicalism, one by one. The house will be left desolate
and there will not be a man of God, a man in whom the Holy Spirit dwells,
left among them.
I hear Jesus saying…Mat 23:37-38: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one killing
the prophets and stoning those who are sent to her, how often would I have
gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her
wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left to you desolate”
As the Church now stands, the man who sees this condition of worldly
evangelicalism is written off as somewhat fanatical. But the day is coming
when the house will be left desolate and there will not be a man of God
among them. I would like to live long enough to watch this develop and see
how things turn out. I would like to live to see the time when the men and
woman of God-holy, separated and spiritually enlightened-walk out of the
evangelical church and form a group of their own; when they get off the
sinking ship and let her go down in the brackish and worldliness and form a
new ark to ride out the storm”
This is one of the most powerful sermons you will hear. It is prophetic and it is timely and it encapsulates everything I try and convey here on my website. Brian is my dearest friend and my brother in Christ and our hearts are absolutely knitted in all matters but especially these matters of what it means to part of the remnant church of Christ and how the Lord God is raising up His people for such a time as this. Please take and share this message with everyone you know and love………bro Frank
I believe God´s vision for His last-day church is based on His revealed Word-because the Bible clearly outlines what the church of Jesus Christ will be like just prior to His coming. Read the rest of this entry »
In every generation we see certain patterns in Christianity. Indeed these same patterns can be found in the Old Testament with the children of Israel. Time and again the children of Israel would re-discover the Word of God and the Spirit of God and they would pull down the high places and they would turn back to God? Are we living in such a time as that? Will this be one more cycle? Could this be last cycle?
I am always careful about dreams and visions on my site. This site is not about dreams or visions, but it is primarily about the Lord and His people and how we stand in these last days. Every now and again I run across a dream or a vision that the Spirit within me witnesses with. Below is such a dream. It comes on the back of a dream I had last year. I have had very few dream, I could count them on my hands for the 21 years I have been a Christian. Last year I had a dream. I was surrounded by darkness and standing on a terrace beside a building. On the lower terrace was an animal, something like very large dog with a goats head but it had hoofed feet and was standing on its hind legs. It was looking directly at me. I knew that it hated me with a level of intensity of a rabid animal. It gaze never left me, it was locked into its purpose but for the moment it did not move but I knew with a certainty that it was coming for me. Strangely, I was calm although my heart rate was beating very fast, it was a strange sensation. I began to back into the corner of the building, it may have been a church but I am not sure. Coming off the building at 90 degrees was a wrought iron fence. It was about seven feet tall and each part of the fence formed a spike at the top. There was no way I could get over it. My eyes never left this animal. I took one step back and here it came, racing towards me. Suddenly a ladder came down from nowhere and it was suspended in the air and went up out of sight. The bottom of the ladder was about four feet off the ground. The ladder itself did not look sturdy to me, in fact I was worried about climbing higher because I thought it would break, yet I felt the Lord say ” come up.” I climbed a few feet higher and the animal was at my ankles.
The uniqueness of Christianity is found when they are persecuted. This willingness to lose one’s life, lose one’s reputation, home, family , job , only really comes to the fore when that is tested. Think about the Gospel of John in chapter three. It talks about being born again and the necessity of believing in God and the one that He sent, Jesus His Son. Now that word, believe, is , in my mind, the weakest of all the translated words in the Bible. Its a semantical nightmare trying to chart a course through what most people believe the word ‘ believe,” to mean. In the context of that given word in John, it meant ” to trust with one’s life.” You see, when it was spoken , to ” believe,” in Jesus as the messiah was to be totally and immediately ostracized from the community. It meant the giving up your culture and the religion that you had held for 2000 years. It also meant that Christ came into your life, not semantically, but actually, and behold a new creature stepped forth.
The piece below is the kind of fearless voice that we need to hear in our own times because it seems that we are in this same position again. We had many moves of God in the last century and for that I praise God, but we have also seen the rise of the seducers and the false prophets in recent decades. Its not a surprise that the enemy would not sit idly by and allow the victories of the Welsh revival,the Pentecostal revival,the Hebridean revival or the moves of God amongst the hippies of the 60s and 70s to go unanswered.
Right alongside these moves came the rise once again of cheap grace. Movements like the Word of Faith, name it and claim it and unscriptural charismania are often easy to see and discern because they fall so far outside the realms of Scripture. Yet cheap grace is an insidious cancer that lulls its adherents to sleep and allows the world to mock their worldliness and rest easy because they see them as no different from themselves.
“They assume that the Church is an ark of safety; and once ensconced within her enclosures, all further anxiety ends. Let us try to unmask this dreadful delusion of the devil.” (AA Phelps, 1883)
This above statement would also apply to those who came forward and signed on the dotted line. To those who lined up and signed up for fire insurance. Their ” ark of safety,” would be the their profession of faith. By merely giving mental assent to a few abstract truths, by saying yeah to points one through five, then all anxiety ends for they are now ” saved.” May, for their very souls sake, the Lord unmask this dreadful delusion before He returns-Frank McEleny
Leonard Ravenhill : Picture of a Prophet
The prophet in his day is fully accepted of God and totally rejected by men.
Years back, Dr. Gregory Mantle was right when he said, “No man can be fully accepted until he is totally rejected.” The prophet of the Lord is aware of both these experiences. They are his “brand name.”
A Call To The Remnant 