Below is a report I received from a dear brother and Pastor from California. He is South African but has been living in the States for a decade. He joined us a couple of weeks ago at a gathering we had at a camp-ground in Missouri ( not tents, I am too old for tents) There were about 25 of us from North America, but the backgrounds were much more varied. We had Americans, Canadians, myself from Scotland, South Africa and Sierra Leone. Within this group we had further diverse backgrounds which included those from Baptist backgrounds, Pentecostal, Conservative families, Mennonites and non-denominational. Please read his report below, it echo’s my own thoughts about the gathering and was exactly what we who called this meeting were seeking, praise God……….
Brother Greg from Sermon Index invited me to attend a conference at camp grounds in Missouri during the week of 17 March. I did not know anything about the various participants beforehand except for some communication with Brother Greg and having read most of the Principles book, produced by Gospel Fellowships, the organizers of the conference.
The conference was unlike any other I had ever attended. There was no preaching, no agenda and no program. About 25 brothers and sisters gathered from various parts of the US and Canada with one purpose and that to spend time in communion – communion with the Lord and with one another. The conference was also different in that there was no food! The two days had been set aside as fast days.
From the moment I was collected at the airport to the moment I was dropped off again, for four days there was only one theme – the Lord and His Word. There were no conversations about sport, politics or anything of the world. This was not because there were rules against such things but because each person had only one driving passion – to know, and honor the Lord.
On the 21st it was Down Syndrome day. The 21st representing the fact that Down Syndrome people have an extra copy of chromosome 21. I am the father of a young man with Down Syndrome , Daniel , who will be 21 this year. The word ” extra,” is interesting to me. Daniel is not missing anything, he has an extra chromosome. Now as the world measures things he has something missing, intellect. Yet, when he looks at the world he is color blind. He is incapable of being racist. He loves equally. Men, woman, the old, the young, the rich, the poor, the infirm, the mentally or physically handicapped, Daniel sees none of that, he only sees people.
This extra Chromosome allows him to view the world as God views the world. My son is happy and contented. I have watched other children mock him sometimes and burned inside, and then he would come in and tell me how much he liked them and that they were his friends. He would bear no ill will or grudges towards them and the very next day approach them and embrace them. This rarely made his Christian father happy.
Three days after he was born, in the midst of great turmoil and darkness the Lord Himself came and whispered in my ear ” I have given you a perfect gift from the treasures of heaven.” This is the clearest word I have ever had from the Lord.Daniel, exactly who he was, was made perfectly by the designer of all that exists. Daniel indeed has something extra, it is God given and I could only wish that I viewed the world through his eyes.
This group of people are not people who have an illness, they are a race of unique people with something extra. And that something extra should help us reevaluate how we measure perfection. If God is no respector of persons, if He loves all equally , then who is closer to the heart of God? Daniel or his dad? Without a doubt, Daniel is closer to the heart of God and I an observer and one who learns from those who have something extra, a God gene. He does not have less than me, I have less than he.
Trust is the foundation of our unconditional relationship with Jesus. Jesus said it in the Garden ” thy will be done,” even although He asked for that cup to be taken from Him. It is so important because without trust and obedience there can be no relationship with God. Just imagine not being able to trust our husbands or our wives, we would have no relationship.It is the same with God and it must be unconditional trust. This mirrors His unconditional love for us. The Word of faith movements and the prosperity teachers urge us to trust in faith and the power of our words to achieve what we desire, yet what does God desire?. Trust and faith and obedience is matured in the crucible of life and its many trials. Jesus is the Way-Not my will but thine be done. And then He set His face, He steadfastly embraced the cross to the Glory of God and the redemption of man. Will you set your face today? Will you simply trust and obey?
If the greatest darkness the world has ever seen( Calvary) produced the greatest light the world has ever seen (The resurrected Christ) then we who are alive and remain just prior to His coming back will witness the greatest light since Jesus walked the earth. There is a great darkness that is slowly covering the world, there is a great light that is coming out from the midst of it, God’s remnant saints. And the world will know that the Father sent the Son for they, in that day, will stand as one. The Father and the Son abiding in His called out ones by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The video below speaks about the necessity of being in that place that the Lord has prepared for us as the darkness grows ever darker. Light shall shine forth from the darkness to the glory of God……….bro Frank
As many of you who visit this site often know, myself and many other voices have been warning now for many years about the great falling away and coming persecution. These elements will serve to separate the sheep from the goats in the last days in which we live. Many know of Steve Hill who just passed away. He had a vision which I would like to share which goes right along with the many voices God has and is raising up in these days. Watch the short video below, I believe it is a word from God to Christendom………………bro Frank
At some point along the way, church became something we do rather than who we are. If what we do defines us rather than who we are in Christ then we cannot expect to see the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. If, on the other hand, what we do flows from who we are in Jesus, then we can expect to see the Lord magnify Himself through His vessels…………bro Frank
Anyone who has ever been around the power structures of the kingdoms within Christendom know that powerful men put into place men who will not question them. They typically surround themselves with what the world would call ” yes men.” It is of course the opposite of the Biblical model but perfectly in line with the world and how it runs itself. It is interesting that we hear and know nothing of the children of the Apostles. Why? Because it was not a dynasty, it was not a family business where sons and daughters are promoted by virtue of who their fathers are. Time and again we see this within Christendom. David Wilkerson managed to avoid so many of the problems of other men with similar sized organisations. He could have easily promoted his own son and groomed him to take over when he retired, but instead he puts an ex-policeman from Canada into that position. Sadly he is a very rare exception. Jesus has to be preeminent in our lives, in our gatherings and in our structures and we have to be but mere bond servants to the cause of Christ and to those who follow Him.
Jesus says ” In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. ” (Joh 14:2 ) Jesus has already prepared a place for us. Can I ask you if you have taken possession of that place and abide there? This place that the Lord went ahead of us to prepare, is a place in which we abide in and walk in. It takes faith to enter into this place, in the first verse of John 14 Jesus compels us to believe in Him. We must believe in the Lord, we must walk in trust and in faith, this is the walk of the Kingdom.
“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” (Joh 14:3) Brothers and sisters, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and that way and truth and life is found in Him and in Him alone. He has called us to be where He is, this is the place of abiding, this is the place that the Lord has prepared for us. It is not a future event, although it will find its fulfillment then when we are raised in incorruption, it is a present reality. The Lord begins the chapter by telling us ” Let not you hearts be troubled.” This place that the Lord has prepared for us is not a troubled place, it is not a place that is filed with anxiety, it is a place of trust and of rest and of peace as we walk in the place and way that He has prepared for us. In this place we abide in His truth and as we follow His way and abide in His truth we are filled with His life.
And ultimately life is the proof , the fruit, the evidence of the place in which we abide. All those who abide in God , in that place which was prepared for us, will have the life of God in them and they will have it abundantly. Jesus walked in this place when He walked on the earth. Jesus did not say that He had come to show us the way, He said that He was the way. The way, the place of abiding, the place prepared for us is no place at all but is Jesus Himself, He is our place of abiding and in that place, in that perfect place, all fear is cast out. We must not be drawn away from this place, for Jesus is the eye of the storm and in the midst of the storms of life, there is perfect peace when we stay there.
Because of the nature of hurricanes, there can be no winds in the very eye, the winds revolve around the center and there is a place created at the very heart of every storm where its devastation cannot manifest itself. Now all around there can be madness and chaos, but at the very heart there is a place of peace, Jesus is our peace and this was His walk on the earth. he too was surrounded by trial and temptation. He incurred the wrath of men as He disrupted the established order of the day, He learned obedience through suffering, He was rejected and despised by men, all around Him there was a constant storm, but He abided with His Father and in that place He overcame the storms of life.
If you are where Jesus is and you abide there, you too will overcome the storms of life. They will follow you no doubt, they will surround you as you walk in Godliness and walk in the Spirit, but they will not destroy you and the life of Christ in you will manifest itself to the world and the world will be amazed at the life you exhibit despite the storms that surround you. It is because of the storms of life that the world is amazed at the life of Jesus in you. To Him who keeps us in His perfect peace, who stands with us through all the storms of life and preserves us in the very midst of them, to Him belongs all the glory.
Below is an article be T.A.Sparks. It speaks to the traditions of men. God is raising up a generation of believers in these last days that seek to move in the freedom of the Holy Spirit where Jesus is preeminent. Conditions will be such that men will not be able to control and organize yet one more denomination. He will bind us together and He will use circumstances to fulfill His will for unity in the Body and freedom of the Spirit. The walls that have formed denominations have been used to create prisons that seek to confine and restrict the work of the Holy Spirit…………bro Frank
I was thinking about some of the criticisms of the notion of Noah’ ark. They talked about how a boat such as that would have split in two in the midst of such a mighty sea that covered the whole world, it would never have held together. Today the Lord spoke into my heart and told me that it was too low. I pondered that. Too low? And then He opened up my heart to understand. The whole conversation was too low. God holds the whole universe in His hands. He holds it all together. The notion that He could not hold a small boat together, for that is what it was in comparison to all that exists, in the middle of a ocean on a small planet, for that is what we are in the midst of vastness, was clearly preposterous. Today I glimpsed something of His vastness in my Spirit, not for the first time but always breathtaking. To truly glimpse the vastness of God is to render all else infintesimal. How big is our God? He is larger than anything that our brains can comprehend.
The forces of chaos are on the march.There has been a release of anti-christian thought that we have never before seen in the west. In times past it has typically taken decades to slowly denigrate a people. Study history and see that the assaults came in what is known as gradualism. Before Jewish people were ever murdered in the holocaust they were openly maligned for at least a decade or more although anti semitism had been around for countless centuries and Jewish people were killed in many pogroms. Goebbels, one of Hitlers right hand men, was the mastermind behind turning a whole nation against one group of people using the power of propaganda via radio and newspapers. In Rwanda we saw the open and brazen denigration of one group against another over a long period of time before the slaughter began, typically through radio. Now we see more and more open hostility to anyone who holds to God’s views whether in the realms of science or morals. The difference today is that there is massive power to be wielded through television and social media and technology. What formerly took decades to achieve, poisoning the minds of the masses, can now be achieved in a stunningly short period of time, such is the scope of that power. And so we see that stage one of persecution consists of marginalizing a minority and denigrating their believes and who they are.
There is a very dark and murky world of Melancholy. It presents many dangers to the world at large and specific dangers to Christians and should be avoided at all costs. Now what is this world of melancholy? It’s a world of past events that exists in the minds of all humans. The more tragic the event or events are, the more deeply someone can be drawn into this world. It also can depend upon the sensitivity of the person and their over all emotional make-up , but nevertheless, it can affect everyone.
Hippocrates said that the causes of the effects of this ” world,” were due to an excess of ” black bile,”which is why we have the word ” melancholia,” meaning black bile. Of course this is not true but it is somewhat of an appropriate description, it conjures up images that are not out-of-place. Okay, two examples of the world of melancholy and why I believe it has a dangerous spiritual element. Example number one is a dear saint from Scotland whose adult son was shot and left to die in the street. This made many headlines in Scotland as we do not have a lot of guns or gun related murders. She publicly announced her forgiveness of her son’s murderer and that was a tremendous witness for the Lord. It has now been many years since that murder but she would tell you that every so often this ” feeling” comes upon her. Now this, I would argue, is the call of this world of melancholy, like the sirens of Greek mythology who lured unsuspecting sailors onto the rocks and killed them. What is this ” feeling?” Well, she is drawn into a place where she re-lives all the intense emotions that she experienced when her son was murdered and it begins to drag her down like quicksand.
You cannot appease God by working for Him. You cannot become spiritual by keeping very active in some form of church activity, or the like. Gods cry and longing throughout the ages of eternity has been for a home, a resting place in a people made in His own image…. and God will not allow you to find rest in your own works. God will not allow you to rest until you find that rest in UNION WITH HIMSELF ALONE. (George Warnock, Feed My Sheep, pg 7)
You see what George is saying? God is looking for a home. He is looking to abide not just in the individual believer but in the Body of Christ that stands as one. No amount of work or activity can make this come to pass for unless the Lord builds the house then we labor in vain. What house does God want to abide in? He wants to abide in the Body of Christ. A collection of stones does not make a temple. Yes we need the stones and they must be cut from the quarry of this world and they must be taken and shaped.
I’m just lookin for some higher ground
But life keeps tryin to drag me down
When your walking with your face into the rain
Sometimes you wonder if you’ll see the sun again
Eyes down, one step in front of the other
Until you think you can’t go any further
Then the rain gets heavier and begins to take its toll
Until your stripped down to your very naked soul
The waters rise and cover all of me
Until there’s only waves and nothing left to see
I am dying there somewhere beneath the flood
Covered by the waters and feet caught in the mud
And suddenly a hand appears from up and out the waves
And a man walks on the water, the storm He calmly braves
He takes my hand and stills the storm and suddenly there’s no sound
And all at once I find myself alone on higher ground
I hear His voice, He speaks to me, it’s time to journey on
In the darkest storms I have discovered just where faith is born
Transfigurations on the mount are such a glorious sight
They give me strength to journey on into the darkest night
We are called unto the battle of this there is no doubt
The faith that’s born from every storm enables us to shout
When the battle it is raging and the enemy’s all around
We know that we are standing with Him on higher ground.
“This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matthew 24:14).
Many in the church today try to determine the nearness of Christ’s return by reading the signs of the times. We see such signs in specific; for example, the return of the Jews to Israel. Yet one of the clearest statements Jesus makes about His second coming is contained in the verse above. The end will come only after the gospel has been preached to all the nations as a testimony. The word that Jesus uses for ” witness,” in this verse is the same Greek word for ” testimony.” In short, He says the Gospel we preach is effective only if it is backed up by a life that testifies to its reality. ( David Wilkerson)
Do you see what David is saying here? It’s not about the Gospel preached, it’s about the Gospel lived. The Gospel lived out is a testimony to the power of Jesus to transform men into new creatures. It’s not so much the correctness of the doctrine, although doctrine is important, it’s about the reality of the witness. The genuine saint living a life empowered by Jesus is a witness to the world. Can we say that Christendom today is a witness to the world? In the average church in America, all the stats of the world on matters of divorce and such are simply the same. The world cannot tell the difference between themselves and Christianity. So, not only is there not a witness for Christ, there is a vehicle for mocking.
Below are the poems and songs I wrote in 2013 all in one place. I pray that they bless you…………..bro Frank
TO HELL AND BACK
How to keep your soul
From burning in the fire
Sometimes to walk this world
Is to wade through muck and mire
To see what Spirit sees
Would drop man to his knees
And in agony look up
And see Christ drink the cup
All the hell in all the world
Came together in one place
Yet even in the midst of hell
There was love upon His face
If we could see this hell
Then what would be the toll?
Shattered in the night
And forever lose our soul?
Hell is fought by Christ alone
And we can look into His face
And as we look we’ll see it there
Tis mercy and tis grace
If you have been to hell and back
And survived to tell the tale
If you would laugh and love again
You must be found behind the veil
He that conquered death and hell
And broke those deadly chains
Is the one that can deliver us
Despite the awe-full pains
—————————————————
TO BE FOUND IN HIM
Just to meet you in the darkest night
Sets my soul on fire, it gives me light
To meet you on the highest peak
Is to feed my soul, tis all I seek
Whether high or whether low
Is neither here nor there
For you alone I want to know
I want to see your face so fair
Can a valley be a mountain?
A prison cell a sanctuary?
Can a man in chains and fetters
Claim to be completely free?
There is a freedom wrought by man
He fights and kills to see it done
There is a freedom wrought by God
On Calvary’s battle-field was won
So whether in the darkest night
Or transfiguration on the hill
I’ll walk by faith and not by sight
I shall not run, I shall be still
Be still when all around are crying
Stand fast when all are set to flight
Know the Lord, and in the dying
His presence overcomes the night
Darkness ends and has no power
And Christ outshines the brightest sun
He is our Rock and strong high tower
No more to fight, the battle won.
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A Call To The Remnant 