Saturday 30 August 2008

The Holy Ghost Growing Machine - The Body of Christ


"We can only point to Christ; the Spirit opens people's eyes. I can't make someone grow, but I can speak Truth into their life; the Holy Spirit grows them." Another great quotable sentence from rjw.
The Holy Spirit grows us.
He does it every waking moment, whether we are consciously aware or not.
“Day to day (our surroundings) are pouring forth speech” Psalm 19:2.
He does it through our family and friends. He does it through The Word, written, preached in church , or on God TV. I say the latter because in Iran , say, it is not possible to do much else...save receive direct impartation through God Himself. So far so good...I could be a Methodist or Anglican Minister eh !!!!
Then in 1973, Graham Pulkingham, when he visited our little rural Baptist Chuch with the Fisherfolk, dropped a bombshell. Now today it will seem so yawningly obvious...you won't even read further. But before revealing his words ...listen..this man spoke with the conscious revelation that he had died and his life was hidden with Christ in God. He wouldn't have it that he was baptised in the Spirit on one particular day. He would constantly say, "I was baptised in the Spirit over 3 months on the crypt floor crying, in the Church of the Redeemer Houston."
Whatever happened to him on the insides during those weeks...came out in the words that he spoke. They flashed out of him like a 100Megawatt light flash. They seared the insides of the poor Baptist people who were present. Like phosphor they clung to the clothes of everyone, so that whatever they made of this sentence, whichever way they fell on it, they had been marked for the rest of their lives. He said " WE ARE The Body Of Christ On Earth!!!"
Boy..were there eruptions! Some had never heard anything so proposterous in their whole lives. Some wanted to leave the church. Some made sure that Pulkingham was never invited back.
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One or 2 years later, a fellowship in Emsworth that met on an adhoc Sunday evening basis to explore the gifts of the Spirit and praise and worship, received a travelling Catalunyan/Argentinian by the name of Jorge Pradas (George, pronounced by Paul Ellis in his inimitable Spanish as Hawkeye. I thought I'd come into a right sect here!! It was the days of the mass suicide of the sect in the South American jungle. My mum was so scared!)
Jorge said more or less the same thing...with the same amount of phosphor from out of the Throne of God. He said," Are you a fellowship...or are you The Church (of the Living God) meeting in Emsworth." And so, under apostolic anointing Emsworth Church was born.
You see , the one thing is undefined, like a "new Cart" that I've been talking about. The other is the conscious decision to walk in the scary uncharted waters of the Order of Melchizedek, or what Bill Johnson, or Mark Stibbe calls The River.
When I am so brutally rude about Terry Virgo, or Rob Rufus, or the apostles headed up by Bill Johnson Peter Wagner or Che Ahn...it is not I repeat, NOT from a spirit like Hank Hanegraaf ..to demean, destroy and dishonour. It is in the spirit of the prophet who was cheery in the morning with David, saying ," Yes, yes David go ahead and build a house for God at Jerusalem." Then that evening he phones up and says..".er David, you know what I said this morning...about you building the house of the Lord...er...You are not going to. You've known too much bloodshed. Your son is going to do it. But tell you what...you can collect all the materials."
Now the Word I have is not as strong as saying to the previous move..."None of you are going to be involved." The Word about the New Cart, comes out of what actually happened at Florida.
Florida, as specifically stated by Bob Jones, and confirmed by Rob Rufus, was not "another Revival". Also it was not going to stop. It is another leap forward of perhaps an ultimately greater order than the leap forward of 1907. IT IS ANOTHER THING entirely.
It contains these factors. Facelessness. Pre-training over years in the hidden places with the Holy Spirit. Nearly all the new anointed teaching and behaviors, and patterns of the Holy Spirit were coming from men in their early 30s. Todd Bentley, Ryan Watts,Roy Field, Todd's team.
It was another order of anointing. It was another order of church. Like the River itself it is contagious. Highly significant for us in the UK was the Word that Florida was primarily NOT for America , but for places like the UK. Every hungry church in Britain has been affected. The way we do church in Havant has changed. Every major conference and camp over the summer in UK has had a different order of anointing in worship, signs wonders and preaching, and conversions. Soul Survivor was amazing, New Wine was amazing, Colin Urquart's one was amazing. River Camp, I say, for all 20 from our church, was absolutely stunning...with Mark Stibbe and Ken Gott.
But the Word I have, which comes out of the misgivings Christine and I had with loads of info about Todd's situation through people , as nice as they are, and as humble as they are, like Peter and Doris Wagner.....is
"Tread warily. You are dealing with a different order of ministry. You are dealing with a different Church Age. Just because you were Christ's apostolic gift to deal with what Ern Baxter in "Thy Kingdom Come" 1975refers to as...The Ziklag job... or the Hebron job....does not presuppose you have the accreditaion transferred to allow you to waltz in and assume you have apostolic authority for the next phase. Now listen to my words...it doesn't mean you don't either. Derek Prince managed to serve the Order of Melchizedek over a series of decades through many changes of level and anointing. (To my knowledge) Michael HarperUK Fountain Trust Pioneer did not. Another speaker in Kansas City in 1975 called John Poole did not. Everyone has to get their visas checked for this next phase.
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The chain picture above shows that the strength of a chain depends on the strength of the weakest link.
When we talk of the Body of Christ. When we use that phrase what is going on inside us? Have we sucked the Blood out of it? DO we use it in the same way as meaning I am in a club, firm, association of people, like IBM, or the State, or the RAC or AA? When I used the stark phrase (Ihave died with Christ, it is not I, but) Jesus Christ in Chris form who lives in me? Did you get angry? Did you just laugh and say "that's weird" or what did you think? I tell you this. The strength of the Body of Christ on earth is directly related to the ability that you as an individual are believing "Christ in me the hope of glory." Anything else is a bunch of people running around still in the lie of Genesis 3:5, as gods in their own right, and when scaled up over the whole Body of Christ, makes us into just another secular institution. As each of us makes the switchover internally , (changeover of our internal seeing) the secondlevel church which sees itself as quite detached from the glory of God(Like on a new cart), actually moves forward into the (new) Levitical order who carry the Ark on their own personal shoulders. It's not just shoved into the hands of the worship band. Or the star preacher. Or our ability or not to pray in the Presence of God for 5 hours.....Why. Because that's where we live .Full time. Knowing there is no separate life. There is no independant life. Never was. It was always Satan wanting to live his independence through me. Since the Cross...Jesus has bought me back as His possession.
The concept of Ezekiel 47 the River is described from a fallen Man's viewpoint. Going deeper into the River until finally diving right in.
The Tabernacle is devised for us fallen men, going from the East (Sin) to being containers of Christ (West).
But the Truth is, from heaven's perspective ....how many of Satan's cancer sin cells dragging you into hell, do you want in your body? Oh I think I'll settle for a count of 25 actually....Nope I don't think so.......You want to get every last drop of independant delusion self life out...now...before it wrecks your marriage,job,health everything. And the Body of Christ is the Holy Ghost growing machine to achieve this.

4 comments:

jul said...

I think I'm following this post and the last well enough. I certainly don't think it's weird the idea of Christ living in us, that we've died and been raised in him and should live effortlessly in the sense that we rest in him, draw all from him and lay our own self-effort down, reckoning ourselves dead to sin and alive to God by faith. I do find it strange that you see it as a secret that Rob or Joseph Prince and others know nothing about... Is the real christian life really so difficult to grasp or is it simple enough for a child?

I'm young and somewhat new to grace and power, to living outside of 'me' and abiding moment by moment in him and am certainly not offended personally. But I can't think that the many men you've listed are completely oblivious to all this...maybe I'm wrong...and I certainly am not holding them up in any way because I'm DONE with the christian celebrity mindset.

My own father is on this now all the time, the Christ life (...no longer I but Christ living in me...) convinced that it is the key to every Christian's dream life so to speak. And equally convinced that Rob and other grace preachers are missing it almost completely, that they're preaching an inadequate gospel. The funny thing about it is, that until he heard their message, all his knowledge about the Christ life was completely useless to him, a goal he could never reach. He needs the grace message to get him into Christ to begin with. We are a body, and each part is essential, each with a message or function that is indispensible. We should not look to any one part for all we need, but benefit from the composite whole in fellowship far and near, similar and different from ourselves. What if Rob is preaching exactly what he's supposed to be preaching? What if he has revelation that God has told him to hold back on for now? Or what if it's your role to preach a different facet of truth to enrich and compliment someone else's message?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, please don't take me the wrong way. These are honest questions that I'm working through, not just inspired by you but by many other voices in my life at the moment...

If I'm ever too blunt or offensive, please just let me know. I can handle correction, just not fond of condemnation hehe.

Chris Welch - 07000INTUNE said...

Thankyou for being so good as sharing all that. It is so hard trying to second guess what is going on out there as we bandy stuff around between the blogs...unless everyone feels safe enough to say what they feel and where they are at.
I think you are really perceptive about your Dad. maybe it's something to do with the Spirit and the Word. Keswick Convention have been hammering "the second blessing" for nearly a century...and many of them confuse this with the baptism in the Spirit.
Maybe they mean a kind of Romans 7-8 thing, or perhaps they are talking about grace. But the wonderful thing about someone like Rob is he walks in what he sees, he lets the Spirit lead him and doesn't get deterred...and he's really exciting to listen to. He is an igniter...(did you read the thing I said on Dan's blog about the ship's propulsion unit having two relatively small but key left and right igniters?) And it sounds like your Dad , as with everyone, needs more of this message of grace. The other key message into the Body of Christ since Toronto and perhaps Floyd McClung's book is about Fatherhood.
It seems that is what God is doing here in Havant, through our May conference and RiverCamp, and just yesterday a major door opening prophecy given by Peter Stott.
Actually the third level is like the birth of a chick. everything in the previous stages now breaks open like an egg...and a new fluffy bundle of energy leaps out to explore a whole new world. Everything we heard before as a corporate church, we'll hear again on a larger wider more powerful scale. As I think I said on Dan's blog...all I'm talking about is one tiny section, to do with the Ark of the Testimony,a wooden box,(a human life) covered inside and out with gold. The others are talking about the real Presence of a Living God, or maybe about the rod that budded which speaks of our new absolutely incredible authority which God expects us to use once we know who we are. others are talking about Fatherhood in real depth...which is not surprising since John's Third level talked abou us "knowing Him who is from the beginning."

Also it is interesting that when Moses actually got his final breakthrough calling at age 80...what did he see but God passing before Him showing HIS GOODNESS.
Job saw something similar in his breakthrough, where God just showed him all the stunning things which God had made in creation...yet filled with thoughtfulness, care and lovingkindness.
I'm finding all this a learning curve myself because it's forcing me to think..now what is it I really believe. For example my answer to Lydia yesterday on the way I would explain Romans rather than Ryan's way.
I believe that Word people were God's way of balancing up Spirit people....but hopefully as Smith Wigglesworth prophesied we will be both....and both to such an extent that we will be as sharp as Jesus to unearth religious spirits and bondage...as you and Dan are always writing.
That's what He was doing with his friend Martha when He turned up 3 days late for Lazarus.

Many thanks to you.

jul said...

I just read your comment on Romans 7 over on Lydia's blog, at least, I read it again! I was wondering if I could get you to clarify what you're saying, it seems your saying that you believe it's speaking of the believer who comes under law, that it's not describing the experience of the unbeliever (which I take it Ryan thinks) but of a new believer, or second level believer...is that right? If so, do you think that a believer is in any way supposed to be still under law, or are you saying that this run-in so to speak with the law as a believer is necessary in order to understand the nature of our new life in Jesus? I think I'm starting to understand where you're coming from a little better, but want to make sure. You've written a few things that tend to make me nervous but I think it's mostly due to me not quite understanding what you're trying to say...the more I read, the more I think I'm not nervous!

Chris Welch - 07000INTUNE said...

Jul,
I'm dashing out to do a piano removal .I just wanted you to know
like Schwarzeneger i'll be back.(Terminator films)