Wednesday 27 October 2010

Travels with John & Fred — January 9 – 23, 2006

Listen, think about it!
In Genesis 3, some really small action took place. Adam stretched out an arm in false believing. From that false believing and "false" faith action is all that you now see as a canker spread right through every nation on earth.
Is it any wonder then, that through our "small" actions as we share the simple message of what Christianity means, (that like leaven, this time the new leaven,) great things are going to grow from this similarly tiny seed, as it engrafts in every nation on Earth. This account is from Fred Pruitt and John Bunting see Fred's blogpost . Can I make it clear I was not on this trip, this is being shared to give you another angle on how God is building.


Travels with John & Fred — January 9 – 23, 2006 — Georgia, Florida, Alabama
Abraham, Apostle Paul, Christ in you, Col 1:27, faith, Gal 2:20, Grace, law and grace, new testament, union with Christ
By Fred Pruitt

After hearty celebrations of the holidays with families and friends, Dr. John & I set off on another adventure in early January. We had driven north before, so why not south this time? So John’s shy wife Linda (people think I’m kidding because she seems anything but “shy,” but so she is) had gotten on the phone with people she knew, and many she had never met though had been in contact with, and fixed us up a schedule hitting a few stops in Georgia, Florida and Alabama.

John and I are continually asking this question: why are we doing this? And now seems appropriate to delve into it again. We had had a long rest between the end of our fall trip and the beginning of January. Life is comfortable at home, and certainly neither of us are past being “needed” at home for various father and husband responsibilities. Our wives love us and I like to think pine for us just a little when we’re gone. We pine for them, too (but we’re men and we don’t talk about it).

But why get up out of this comfort zone and go ride around in a little car all over the country staying in houses with people we often don’t know? It would be answering a simple question if we had some tangible product we were selling, something you could hold in your hand, or at least a “program” you could apply. And that this tangible “product” would produce quantifiable guaranteed results. Or that we were building some structure that we could point to and measure our progress. But we “have” none of that, and offer only a Person (God in Jesus Christ) as the foundation and daily reality of life, and bring only ourselves as we are in Christ, and we trust that He lives as us.

So the first answer to why, is the first answer that came to us, causing all the other answers: it is the compulsion of the Spirit, which is a drive of love. Before we ever got in the car, there was the drive of the Spirit to get out to wherever we could to give what God had given us.

Each successive step has come from the preceding one. With each step, we know a little more, and also ask a little more. I understand more what Paul meant when he said in Philippians 3: “Not as though I have already attained.” It isn’t a “self” attainment, some higher degree of sanctity, that Paul is talking about, but rather the constant seeking of love to fill places with itself. Love does not rest because it is its nature to go out of itself, away from its own comfort, to only find release and rest in expending itself in reproduction of itself.

What John and I are learning (and sharing hopefully) through all these travels and visits, is not something special just to us and “revealed” to us because we’re out “doing God’s work,” but we are only learning and living what is happening in all of us in our regular daily lives, each and every day. The “love drive” I speak of which compels us to do what we do, is the same “love drive” in each of us, which compels us all who are in Him, to do what we do. Christ has come into us to be, first of all, foremost and foundational to everything, the Love of God in us. The true “other-love.” And this is what we find to be true every moment of every day — that He by our lives is manifesting in the world around us as love.

He’s the water, and we’re the structure people come to to draw the water from — the well. Which is the final purpose of our going, that these wells would spring up everywhere where there have been only deserts before. The wells are ourselves in Christ and He in us, each of us the starting points for innumerable rivers of living water flowing out of each of our middles, to water and bless the world.

In a nutshell, that’s all we’ve been sent out to share. And we are finding hearing ears everywhere we go.

And with that as our context John picked me up early in the morning of January 9th. We were under the gun already at 6 AM — we had to be at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant near Chattanooga, Tennessee, by lunchtime for a lunch date. We were meeting with a man John had met on a trip several years ago to Romania. Eddie Cantrell is a pastor at a local Baptist church in the area, and he and John had hit it off when they met on a mission trip and had the same “message” to give in their talks – union with Christ. Eating at Cracker Barrel satisfies the southern cookin’ hankerin’ I get every now and then, so I was agreeable to the meeting as well.

One thing I’ve learned on my trips with John Bunting — we don’t dawdle — so it was no problem getting to the lunch date on time. (We are often very very early – we were once a day early somewhere and we didn’t know it!) We phoned Eddie and he met us and we had a great chat about the good things of God and how things were going with him, while thoroughly enjoying the biscuits, gravy, mashed potatoes, and the various other things that go with them.

From there on to Dallas, Georgia, to visit Ray and Lee Epperson. I remember it was warm enough that we sat out on their back porch for a couple of hours. We’d been cooped up in our houses for the past couple of months in Kentucky, so it was a pleasure to sit out for a while. We had lively conversation throughout the night with Ray and Lee regarding our union with Christ.

The next night we drove from Dallas over to the Lake Lanier/Gainesville area, where our hosts, Bill and Lynn Davis, had arranged for us to stay at a lakehouse nearby. Bill and Lynn had set up a group meeting for the evening. I knew I was in the right place when we got there at dinnertime. They had brought in barbecue, and among the selections was Brunswick Stew. I’m partial to Brunswick Stew when it’s made right, and this turned out to be made just right. I hadn’t seen Brunswick Stew since I moved to Kentucky, so I knew I was back in Georgia and we were to be greatly blessed!

But aside from that, the Davis’ sponsored our first formal “meeting” on this trip. They had invited a few friends from their fellowship in. Jim played the guitar and led in song and then John and I took turns giving short talks. After that we had a good session of questions and discussion at the end.

The next morning we headed south to the Atlanta area, where we had two people to see in the afternoon, and then a get-together at a church in the evening. In our non-dawdling way, we had plenty of time to kill for our lunch appointment when we arrived in Atlanta. So I thought John should have a little tour. I had gone to middle and high school in Atlanta, as well as sowed many of my wildest oats, in the very part of Atlanta where we were going. And I thought I knew it like the back of my hand, in a 40-year-ago-memory-gap sort of way. I was surprised more than once, though, as many things were more or less where they had been all those years ago, but the ways to get to them had become all askew. Still I found my way to show John my house from high school days and many other landmarks, but John’s favorite part of the tour, no doubt, was when I had him go down all these side streets off Peachtree Street in Buckhead to an old three story brick structure that surprisingly, to me, was still standing — and then I began singing my high school alma mater. (I tell my wife at least my high school is still standing. Hers is a K-Mart now.)

We met a wonderful lady for lunch, Rosemarie Lownik. She is one of the many people who have come to us via the internet in one way or another. Like many others, what we are sharing is what she was already hearing in herself and from other sources, that she is Christ expressing Himself in her daily living, and we found another new heart friend. After lunch Rosemarie had to get back to work and we next visited an old friend of John and Linda from their high school days.

Then, as traffic was gearing up for another daily freeway-jamagananza, we set off to the other side of Atlanta to meet with Reggie Screen, pastor of a church in Lawrenceville. John had visited there in 2004 with Dan Stone. Reggie and his people had received John and Dan with openness and excitement in 2004, and the same was true for our visit. After dinner with Reggie, we met with his midweek group and he gave us the floor. As has become our habit, we nod to each other and somehow one of us begins to speak, and this time John began sharing his testimony. Afterwards I got to give along the same lines. (And during the time John was talking, he got a couple of telephone calls from his children and grandchildren wishing him happy birthday). Reggie and his people again were delightful and responsive heartily to the words John and I had shared.

The next day found us riding due south for Florida. After barely a month of winter at home, I was already prepared for some warm weather. Hoping for some, anyway. We got to Ocala in mid-afternoon and spent the night with old friends, Rock and Deb Gibboney. It was old home week for us all since we hadn’t seen each other in many years. We had a great time of sharing with Rock and Deb until mid-day the next day, when John and I pulled off toward the ocean. It turned out we had an extra day in our schedule and neither of us had seen the sea in a while and it was so close ….

So we headed on over to the Daytona area which was pretty much deserted, being January. We got a room on the beach that looked like it had been the setting for a thousand keg parties, but it had active high-speed internet, so who was complaining? And it was on the beach! We treated ourselves to a steak dinner and enjoyed the surf when we returned. There’s something about the ocean, even just a few minutes of it. It always speaks to me of the mystery of God and ourselves.

The next day on the way out we had breakfast across the street from the Daytona 500 Speedway. When we were in the parking lot of the restaurant we could hear the cars driving around inside the speedway, they were so loud. It made me think of all my friends who love NASCAR.

Our next stop was Sanford, Florida, at the church of Pastor Theory Stringer. We had been corresponding with Theory for a few months, after he and his church member George Magu (a man from Kenya) found us via the www.christasus.com website. Pastor Theory had invited a number of other local pastors to his church for a Saturday afternoon meeting. We had an informal session in their sanctuary, with Theory and the other pastors asking to hear from us regarding living in union with Christ. Each of us gave our take and then we had a lively discussion. One portion of our session that made an indelible impression on me, was how firm Theory and others with him were on being “slaves of God.” It is a truth we easily pass over from time to time, but Theory reminded us how total our slavery is in being bondslaves of God, doing the will of our “master” from the heart, and in that is freedom. To finish the evening they took us down to the church basement for a wonderful dinner put together by some of the ladies.

The next day was Sunday and we were scheduled to meet our next contact, someone we’d never met, at a church service in Orlando. We didn’t even know what our friend looked like, just the address of the church.

Showing up more than an hour early we of course found it deserted, so a few cups of coffee later we returned to find people parking and walking into the building. John and I didn’t recognize anybody, but we went in and sat down toward the rear. Service got started a while later with lots of rousing songs and it seemed like at one time or another, almost everybody in the congregation got up and either went up and grabbed a microphone and sang, or picked up an instrument and played. We were in a good ol’ fashioned country church, the kind neither of us had been in in a good while, and there was shoutin’ and lots of movement, onstage and off! We weren’t even sure who was the pastor until a quiet unassuming man got up, staying below the platform and never “ascending” the pulpit, and with a Bible in hand began expounding on the scripture. He was Brother Harvey Turnage, a beautiful man who surprised our socks off by preaching about living and knowing God in the NOW, experiencing the goodness, mercy and perfection of God in our present moment living. He was singing our tune, and after church we joined Brother Harvey and a host of others for lunch, and left him with a copy of “Hearts of Flesh.”

Later we found out by phone from Brother Harvey that he had read in “Hearts” that we knew Norman Grubb. “Yes,” I told him, “we were privileged to have known him and been friends with him.” Then Brother Harvey told me he’d met Norman Grubb “about 40 years ago in Memphis,” and he said he’d been preaching that message ever since. Brother Harvey and I have since talked several times and he is a tremendous Spirit man. It was a privilege to have met him and his little congregation in Orlando. We hope to see him again.

Our contacts, Les & Polly Houghton, brought us together. We also met them at the service. We didn’t know them before, either, but they knew people we knew in New England. And that’s how these trips come about. Everything is as John says, “Serendipitous.” That’s a good word. It really does work like that, though. Everything falls into place as we take each successive step.

Our next stop was the Melbourne area, hosted by Mark and Jo Ann Parker. They were tremendous hosts, and had arranged four meetings for John and me, two in the mornings and two in the evenings. Most of our meetings are “one night stands,” with the occasional two-nighter. And even with a two-nighter, no one usually calls on us to share more than two sessions. But FOUR? Did we have that much to say?

As usual, the Spirit loves an empty place, and “we had nuthin” as the saying goes, so we ended up having four really tremendous sessions. It was mostly the same people so were able to have continuity. We started the first morning with the basics of our understanding of who we are from the scriptures, moving quickly into the frustration we run into in our spiritual lives. That sparked lots of interest and back and forth, and our session which began at 10:00 lasted until nearly 3:00 when people finally had to split up. In the evening session we spoke a great deal about faith and living Christ by faith. The next morning we started out with a question and answer session that again went until mid-afternoon, followed up by a night session that delved into the purpose of our sonship in God, that we might be joined in the Father’s & Son’s redemptive purposes, that life is no longer about us and our well-being, but now the life flows out of us to touch the others around us. And the first afternoon between sessions we managed to slip in having coffee with some friends who came up from another city, and then the next day had dinner with one of our new friends in the Melbourne/Palm Bay area, Phyllis Muesig. So the time ended up being filled, and filled mightily with the life of the Spirit in each and every person!

Melbourne was our southernmost point in Florida for this trip (we’ll be back), so the next morning we headed back north on I-95 to Titusville, to meet and spend the day with Patrick and Pam Bielen. We had been writing each other via email but it was our first meeting. It had been obvious to us before we met that Patrick was turned on about our life in union with Christ, but we truly had no idea of his passion for it until we spent the day with him and his wife. We started talking in their living room the moment we got there and went all day. Pam made a great chicken enchilada for lunch and we kept right on talking while enjoying the best Mexican food in Titusville bar none! Patrick works with gang kids in juvenile detention, a REALLY tough job, and while he can’t “officially” give Jesus, he has many stories where Jesus slipped Himself in anyway, to some miraculous results. He is doing great work and we believe with he and Pam to see many lives affected and brought to Jesus out of the darkness he encounters everyday. We can certainly remember Patrick and Pam in our prayers.

Next we stopped a night upstate in Alachua, just outside Gainesville, to see old friend Steve Pettit. At least old friend to John. I had only met Steve once before we had a night with him, but John had been with him many times. Steve and his wife were as gracious as they could be, giving us a day for R&R and doing a little wash.

The final major stop in our tour was in Tallahassee with Billy and Patty Hattaway. They are also old friends to many of us. We spent the first night having dinner with our hosts and talking about the things of the Spirit. The next day they gave us a tour of the area, especially the athletically oriented sites associated with Florida State University, which John enjoyed thoroughly, since he knows all the coaches and all the players. I just liked looking at the sights.

That night Billy and Patty had invited friends in, and John and I plucked our one string again. We spoke again about one of the themes that have been constant on all our trips, that we enter into our rest in God through faith, and this is our entering into the fulfillment of Ephesians 4:14-16:

That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

John has continually said everywhere we’ve gone: “There is a Graduation Day!” And this is what we testify. There is an entering into the “rest of God,” and it is in simple faith that we enter. “All things are possible to him that believeth.”

We concluded our evening at the Hathaway’s with another heart discussion about these things. It was obvious to us that night, and it was obvious to us everywhere else we’d been as well, that there had been great stirring of the Spirit among us all. More and more to us Jesus’ words are proved: Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. (John 4:35)

The next morning Billy and Patty saw us off with a good hearty breakfast. We had a last chance for me to stop at a tourist place to get some Florida coffee mugs to take home, and then we turned northward into Alabama. We stopped and had lunch with another friend, Bill Espy, in Dothan Alabama. After spending a couple of good hours with Bill we drove up to Birmingham to see our old friend Doug Eblen for the night. Doug has been in bad health but when we saw him he had some improvement and we were glad to see it. I have known Doug as long as I have known John and they both are precious to me beyond words. We spent a good evening with Doug who showed us some of his best and latest treasures (he likes old rare books, especially of William Law or Jacob Boehme), and he has some true rare gems, to be sure. Someone could spend a lifetime just studying his collection.

That was our last night on the road, and we were up early the next morning to drive the last few hours home. I was meeting Janis who was with our daughter in Nashville, leaving John to drive the last three hours by himself to Louisville. John and I drove through the rain from Birmingham to Nashville, only a few hours, and met up with Janis and Jessica for lunch, and then in a very anticlimactic way John and I split up at that point — he just backed his car over to mine and I got my stuff out — and I guess there our trip officially ended, in a mall parking lot in Nashville, Tennessee.

I think it was there in the parking lot, meeting my wife and daughter, with John, that I see all over again what this is all about. It really is about the people. It’s about love and friendship, truth, light, respect, and all the other things that figure in regarding “people.” “Jesus endured the cross … for the joy that was set before Him.” What was the joy? A big mansion in the sky with a Ferrari out front? More jewels in his crown than anybody else? NO!!!! WE were the joy set before him. All of US.

And now that’s what we’ve joined into when we have come into Christ and He into us. We find we cannot help ourselves from some involvement in some way that we might be the bread of life for others. That’s the “new nature” that we now are. A nature of love.

And that’s the end of our January 2006 trip.

Monday 25 October 2010

More on Richard Wurmbrand






Richard Wurmbrand
by Stewart Henderson

i only met him once
his long body
curved and delicate
like a well sucked wishbone

and behind his eyes
the memories of countless nights
manacled to the nightmares of Satan
his ears besieged by devilish anthems
declaring that his Christ was dead
And now every movement
magnifying the taut weariness
of a prisoner of war
a walking twig
a victim of the fight
between heaven and hell

his body like the Messiah's
so gladly given to torture
for the sake of strange mystical things
like resurrection and kneeling with angels
to sing the joyous symphonies of paradise

I only met him once
and I walked away and wept


from http://www.releaseinternational.org/ reg.charity 280577 PO Box 54,Orpington BR5 9RT
01689 823491

'My dear brothers and sisters in the West,
I, in my solitary cell, in the grip of tuberculosis which
invaded my whole body, sit with the angels as in a theatre and watch everything that is happening, that has happened, and is yet to happen.
God abides in me. If He abides in me, He brings with Him all His responsibilities. They become mine... If God lives in me and you, it depends on us whether beauty will conquer, or whether mankind will deteriorate more
and more.
If God the Father and Jesus Christ abide in a Christian, it becomes his task to change the perverted, the immoral, the obsessed, the ambitious, the robbers; to transform a neurotic world into a world full of serenity.
...Jesus said that the second commandment, to love your neighbour, is like the first, to love God. If you love us, the oppressed Christians in the Red camp, you love God, because God is within us, in cell eleven, and twelve, and thirteen, and in the cell with the rats and in the cell reserved for tortures.
I cannot tell you what to do for us... Our Bibles have been confiscated. Our families eat garbage. I don't know how you can reach them. But you are the abode of the almighty and omniscient God. He must know.

Wurmbrand

by Chris Welch

The fifty or so carrion Christians

hunched round Baptist arcs and curves

one expectant evening Sunday meeting

tucked compulsorily 100 Conformist metres or so

from the main London Oxford thoroughfare,

a stone's throw from what would be THE Crown,

The Four weddings and a Funeral pub.

Carrion Christians,

gathered then

for rich Communist pickings of

suffering, endurance,

as Red atheist twisted ideology grasps

for life like an outstretched arm

from its own self-burial of heartless dogma,

grasping yes at the last vestiges of sainted resurrection

to be sucked from innocent lives,

Christians,writers,artists,daring outspoken reformers....

He stood there, this Wurmbrand,

already tall, now towering in the Baptist pulpit.

Silent. But then fixing us with his eyes.......

******
We knew evangelically

evangelistically

that you asked Jesus in. You sang songs.You heard sermons.

About a future time, after death.

A firm resounding symphonic hope exploding in

organ firework splendour of hymns sung so heartily..

muffling deeper questions of what now? what here?

what in my family, what in my town?.........

Have you ever seen lightning strike?

Have you watched

time cease to be?
Have you seen life fork violently left from

a determined expected course?

********

Richard Wurmbrand straightened,

then beamed with a light I have seen only a handful of times.

A light that divides all that you ever believed or knew or thought you knew.

A light that shipwrecks self-determinism. For in this light was

what you would call now a "burning wormhole" straight through

to what had almost been glorious theory, but now was actual and visible -

the THRONE of a LIVING GOD.

A KINGDOM more than hoped for,

but here, now,

a safe 100 metre distance from the high street where Tesco now stands.

God has said I am no more to talk about Communist prisons, he smiled...

I am here to tell you about Romans 8 !

Carrion,

startled now, with softer frame,

ingest perhaps the first real food of their lives,

their first real chance of an eagle life of their own,

gazing through a fiery wormhole,

a Wurmbrand.

Thursday 21 October 2010

The New Subject of Spirit Geometry by Chris Welch


First appeared on Facebook Wednesday, 20 October 2010 at 11:47


How do I know about this subject? I just made up the title.

Jesus was clever.He not only told stories about families and friends and fluffy things, he also told tales of builders and towers and armies.

Get my drift? Generally the Kingdom is presented in such a female style that churches are filled with women. Well that's one take. Another is that men have this slightly linear angular style to their thinking that doesn't pick up on the MANIFOLD wisdom of God. Women are perhaps better at this.

So , like a car, if your wisdom doesn't have a MANIFOLD, go down the shops and get one.

The real problem with politics is not the validity of left and right views.

The real problem with the church is not which particular denomination has the right view.

The real problem with education is not whether kids should be taught strictly, or left to go at their own pace.



No, the real problem with all of the above is way way way more basic.

The real problem is that the Fall locked us into our left-brains. Into linear thought. Into

I live from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil and everything along a rigid line of values going from bloomin marvellous to less good to bad to absolutely appalling. We live the opposite of Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and DO NOT RELY on your insight.But in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths."

This has become "Trust in your insight with all your heart and do not rely on your Lord. In all your ways stumble on through until you can make your own paths straight."



Any idiot can see that if we ran politics the way the two hemispheres of our brain work, or like a family manages a household with input from both parents, both left and right disciplines are equally valid. But linear thought can't see that. It is locked into into its own tramlines.

Just so for religion. Just so for education.



So Spirit geometry is for people with angular thinking. It's not quite the same as I've just written , so kindly rub down the blackboard, or if you've got one of those digital whiteboard thingies, just refresh the page please. Thanks.



This is about the 3 dimensions of physical space. Forwards sideways and up. It's about God's desire to build a house in the Earth.

So it is about combining ideas of physical geometry with Spirit construction. It is a totally one sided picture just as Jesus words were one sided: Before you build a tower , consider that you have got enough materials to make it, because when you start building and haven't enough to complete it, people are going to look on and laugh. That is, this picture contains nothing of God's love, or relationship or anything fluffy like that, so is only a very limited picture, since the whole of the Kingdom is about love. I'm saying this so you can blame Jesus at this point, not me. He started it.

The Stephen Hawking type word for a point in space having no dimensions forwards or sideways or up is a singularity.

When we are born again at our spirit centre we are a singularity. We are totally alive. We, like DNA, contain the complete frame of reference for everything that will ever be built into our life to make us a 100% fully mature adopted Son of God useful for any work on God's building anywhere on Earth.

The Bible's picture for Spirit Geometry is the Tabernacle. The Children,young men,father maturity manual of 1 John 2 put into a construction model.

To begin with, we are very limited in what God can do with us. We move in only one dimension , lets say forwards. We know how to share with others about how they too can have our "singularity" experience. We can say to folk, "I've been born again and you can be too."

We can tell others how to grow. "you move forwards like this...see...it's easy isn't it?"



My problem with the next section of description is that the Young men stage of Christianity or here, the two dimensional form of Christianity seems to have 2 strands to it. You have people like me who only knew a full baptism in the Holy Spirit which jetissoned us off to share into our school and caused a small localised revival. But you also have Norman Grubbs that never have a clean clear experience of the Baptism in the Spirit and Jesus still lets them get into heaven....sorry that's cheeky. Ofcourse they get into heaven. But it kind of leaves the dilemma with how we get into twodimensional "plane" construction with such two different strands of folk. And I think it works like this.

In the second "area" of the Tabernacle, the "young men " stage are two classes of objects. There are the 12 pieces of Shewbread all neatly laid out on the Table, but there is also the candle stick, the ONLY form of Light in there. If the Bread is more Word based experience and the Candlestick is more Spirit experience-power-and gift based you begin to understand how these other "interlopers" (and remember both sides think that simulataneously of the other group) dwell side by side with US the true servants of God!!!!LOL

Clearly though, those fed on the Bread are still into linear thinking, because all their portions are neatly cut up and served up uniquely for them. Never the Breads shall meet.

So, in this stage, we can share with others not only how to get born again, (a singularity) how to grow moving forwards in one line, but also how to MOVE SIDEWAYS as well. Thus we are starting to break free from the curse of the Fall in our thinking. We are beginning to tentatively be aware that there are 12 tribes in here, but we don't want to look around much beyond about 4 or 5 of them. The rest make us feel sick.So we don't have anything to do with them.



Let's look at Jesus with the disciples. They were Hebrews. They understood about God. It was in their history. It was in their culture. Although not properly and legallly born again n yet, because that only happened when He breathed upon them after the Cross, nevertheless Jesus was really introducing them to a good deal MORE than One dimensional Kingdom. Pretty soon they were moving in two dimensions...they were empowered...goodness knows how...probably like the prophets of the Old Testament....and they prayed and commanded miracles....and so it was...they got the miracles...

And for a hundred years now, we as an international Body have been preaching this same two dimensional gospel of being born again, receiving the Power of the Holy Spirit and going around reproducing this type of Body, this type of Kingdom. In Spirit Geometric terms we've been spreading out numerically to the right and left. Or another way to say it is we have been sharing our LINEARITY in all directions!!!!! This makes a PLANE shape. Pentecostals. YWAM. All kinds of Spirit-filled housegroup. All kinds of Sattellite broadcasted Warehouse Church. Joseph Prince. Rob Rufus. The "reproductive" ministry of Morris Cerullo through Schools of Ministry that teach "PLANE" construction techniques.



BUT GOD IS LOOKING FOR A HOUSE!

A THREE DIMENSIONAL HOUSE.

And here the example breaks down.

Because God's House itself....

REPRODUCES IN THREE DIMENSIONS.



What is the third dimension? What is it that stops us building flat boring "Planes" everywhere we go that like half built towers just cause people to laugh hysterically, falling on the floor beating the ground? What is it that takes Sattellite TV form boring talking Head form where Joyce Meyers or Bertie Brits tells a story about how good the Kingdom is....to actually filming the 3d KINGDOM deal, as would have happened had Acts 2 been filmed, with PETER STANDING UP WITH THE ELEVEN and proclaiming "What you see and hear HAPPENING is this......."



The third dimension had a rough start. The first time Jesus shared it tentatively half his audience left. I experienced that two weeks ago at the Oast house Conference. I shared with Andre that the same thing had occurred with me when I was 16 in Darmstadt West Germany in 1974. I literally had a nun practically frogmarch me from the bookshop (I loved linear thinking) down to the room where Mother Basilea, fresh from 2 weeks fasting and praying about Mao's invasion of Europe, flaming with heaven's fire scorched us on the inside with two "third dimension" or third level messages. The third stage of growth begins with us hearing a proper version of the 2nd level or 2nd dimension. Before we hear it we are strutting around the 2nd area of the Tabernacle with no real clue why we are in there, what it's for, and can we really go now, and evangelise the world because Jesus You are clearly wasting our time by bringing us in here in the first place, when we could be on Sattellite TV being more talking heads!!! And then we'd be famous....and then everybody will love me....and then......



Jesus suddenly with no health warning whatsoever announced to the disciples

"Unless you eat of my flesh, and drink of my Blood, you HAVE (now already) NO LIFE WITHIN YOU."

Ouch. Ouch.Ouch.Ouch. That bolt just came from out of His innards, out of His spirit and hit them in the same place.

Ouch.



You see I get a little alarmed hearing Andre and Francois speak. Their understanding of the Word is incredible. The blessing side of their ministry is undeniable. But in all the "short" time I have been with them I have not heard a single "bolt" coming from their innards, nothing that would make half their congregation disappear. And OK, it didn't happen all the time with Jesus. But reading the gospels through with this "3rd dimensional" perspective going on you start to see Jesus was continually causing trouble. Unlike some of the youngsters out on the circuit today, it wasn't rudeness....

It was that Jesus continually hit the Ezekiel 10:8 scrawlings that were the foundations of the people's lives He was talking to.

I used to wonder what on earth Ed Miller was going on about when he continually referred to various psalms which speak about God's voice like lightning, laying waste the foundations....

What foundations? What voice? I don't hear no voice...(Bit like Ghostbusters)



But 3 hours later , I'd leave an Ed Miller meeting and the whole of my innards would be shot through with lightning marks.



So what is the Holy Place for? If the Outer Court area is one dimensional....it gets us properly saved and knowing Jesus so we can also tell others....what is the Holy Place, the young man stage , the 2 dimensional stage all about?

Well, it's where our soul gets the KINGDOM treatment. It's where our heart , mind and will get KINGDOMIZED big time.

As I write in my blogpost which is one of the most read of all

http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2010/04/this-is-not-christian-life-study-in.html

Like Rene Magritte and Ceci n'est pas une pipe......the 12 lumps of shewbread and the candlestick

ARE NOT THE KINGDOM

They are about the Kingdom. They are the sattellite TV shows telling you about the Kingdom. They are even the manifestations of Power, and revelation and prophecy, which we receive on our insides which BECOME the Kingdom in us, like growing seeds,

but they themselves ARE NOT THE KINGDOM.



The Kingdom itself is in one place only.

The Holiest Place. Where God is.

For millennia we have known that.

What we haven't known is that the KINGDOM

IS US.

FULL TIME.Flesh incarnations of walking talking GOD in our forms

with the Presence of God, and the Spirit manifestations overhead backing us up.

It's Jesus fused with us. We have eaten Him. Literally.

Our little acacia/human flesh boxes are now covered with gold on our insides and out.

Inside us full time are the 10 commandments . The Word that Francois and Andre are sharing. The LOGOS.

But inside us also is the stick that budded. Faith operations, intercession operations which we speak by the Word of faith like Nancy Gilmore. Not only that , there's the MANNA word (Manna actually always meant...what on earth is that?) Manna word is what both Andre and Francois don't preach. Manna is RHEMA. It's the NOW Word that goes off after a day and begins to smell.

And overhead is an awesome Presence of God where things like Josh Mills and his glory gold dust fall every time he plays in churches. that is unless you are not wiping oil off your face at the same time. These are various wacky things God just enjoys doing which are never the same, but accompany His Word.

This is what is meant by the Incarnate Christ. It is this the Devil has not wanted. Doesn't care too much about sattellite TV or Pentecostal Christianity or whatever...... In revelation it says it's the MANCHILD he wants to chase off God's earth!

He absolutely does not want a COMPLETE TOWER. A 3dimensionsal, walking/ talking /working/worshipping/ sleeping/marrying/kid raising manifestation of the incarnation of Christ. He hates 3 dimensions. Because 3 dimensions means that his thousands of yours of reviling God's Word is UP

"NOW IS the manifestation of the Glory of God made known IN THE CHURCH TO ALL PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS!"
Selah

Notes
Epistemology is a long word I learnt of another learned brother's Christian blog. It means the study of truth, or how do we know or test the truth to be the truth.
Christian history is full of people saying the same words but meaning totally different things underneath. This article brought up a few discussions.

Let's go back one level and discuss the NEW COVENANT IN MY BLOOD.
Now this phrase is said in every church nearly every Sunday. But let's take a typical Anglican Church. They say this phrase because it is a theologically correct thing to say, but if you test the spirit of what is meant in most Anglican churches
what it doesn't mean is Jeremiah 31 as follows:
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
and
"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.

34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,"
declares the LORD.
"For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more."

The Anglican church is run exactly like the Jewish synagogue predecessor but with Christian attachments...so yes it is not the new covenant actually but a rehash of the old one.You still have a presbytery who stand between you and God, and they still teach you to know the Lord because no one really does. And every week there is remembrance of sin. And every week people are NOT taught the New Covenant which is the very Divine principle within that makes us not want to sin, becausewe are too busy with our New Father's business.

Got that?

Well in the same way Francois rightly points out that you can learn about the Tabernacle and it can, if taken in a wrong spirit, make you just like Martha was when Lazarus died and Jesus arrived in her eyes "late". She put everything Jesus was about to do today off into some resurrection sunrise at the back of beyond. Jesus looked straight at her and said effectively: Hellooo, I AM the resurrection and the Life.....Let's go do it!!!
So Francois writes:
The logos was logos before any one heard it preached, Gods logic didnt become logic or truth by popular vote why always look for a justified season, 4 months for the full harvest to manifest! Weve been sucked into that for centuries! Like th...e Jews we quickly buy into stuff that makes us delay and postpone the hour that has already come! That way they missed the Messiah in their midst! theyre still waiting. Instead, lift up your eyes and see the ripe harvest!
the temple isnt under construction for 2010 years and eventually Gods gonna remove a bit of the scaffolding to show the prophets the real thing! It was done to perfection in 3 days! levels keep sincere pple occupied with excuses to remain for another couple of laps in the wilderness!
and.............
The Greeks are here to see you! What did Jesus hear when he heard that the nations seek him? He heard what he read in Haggai...he knew that he was the desire of the nations! No wonder that he responded: "The hour has come for the son of man... to be glorified! This is the moment that the prophetic word was all about, the moment all creation was waiting for! (How will that happen, How will God glorify the son of man, after Adam lost the glory on man's behalf?) unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone
You cannot feed a family of 4 let alone the nations with a single grain of wheat! This was the hour of the fulfilment of the mission of Jesus, to die our death and to be raised into the full harvest of mankind’s redemption! It bore much fruit! The single grain of wheat did not abide alone! (Jesus could only be at one place at one time; he couldn’t be in Jerusalem and Japan at the same time as a single individual, but he’s about to be multiplied beyond count in the harvest of human lives)

We were made alive together with him, (while we were still dead in our sins, before we understood or believed any of his mission) the nations were raised together with him and seated together with him in heavenly places!!!

no wonder then that the first people to be identified as living the Christ life, were those same Greeks from John 12 (amongs others) but now they sat under Pauls message and discovered Christ not in Jerusalem, but Christ revealed in them! Acts 11

Our point of departure is the throne room! Col 3:1-4 Eph 2:5,6, 1:17...(not as a reward for mature believers after many years of churchianity and ‘moves’ and waves of revivals) as fresh, brand new believers! because there is only one faith, God's.


to which Nancy Gilmore replied
In to us! In to us! The first two levels, (little children, young men), are into us! A Complete Christ in to us! We are DONE! We are operating as a WHOLE person in Christ; spirit, soul and body. As a whole person in Christ we operate on this third level, which is: what the Spirit has produced in us, (Christ fully formed!), He now goes out by us and produces Christ in others! Others are the benefactor now of our lives; even at our expense! Spirit-spirit union is co-crucified with Christ as co-risen with Christ!
I think Francois is not getting the reality which Nancy is speaking
because he comes back with the Spirit done deal package again (which ofcourse is fine...and I especially like the phrase in red.)


There is a dimension of life available to man that exceeds every bonsai boundary that we’ve imagined, inherited or created. “The thief comes with only one agenda, to steal, kill and destroy; (W...hat is he after? He fears your knowledge of the likeness of God in human form!) Jesus came that you might have life more abundantly!” John 10:10. “If you continue in My Word, you will know the truth (about yourself) and the truth will set you free.” Christ gives true context and definition to life in its most complete display. “It is in Him that God gives a full and complete expression of Himself in a human body. Moreover, your own completeness is only realised in Him.” Col.2:9,10, Phillips translation. The original blueprint design is intact in Him; this is the fuel of belief. Faith is not a blind-fold leap in the dark! Faith sees the complete picture. Neither is faith a luxury option, it is the substance of our being, it is our ears with which we hear the eternal voice, our enlightened eyes, and the hand with which we harvest life, and it is our only escape from the agenda of darkness. “Whatever is not prompted by faith is reduced to flesh.” Rom.14:23.

...and this is a summary of the Afrikaans thought 4 today...
1 Kings 6:7 "not a sound of a hammer or chisel or any tool was heard! Because every stone was already cut to precision and perfection in the quarry! Isa 51:1 there is only one quarry where this could possibly happen! man's co-crucifiction and co-resurrection in Christ, in God's economy!

Both Nancy and I are NOT saying we wait to "eventually" get some Holy of Holies experience.
The last article and last blogpost expressly states it is true for us in our spirit the day we enter Christ, and from God's point of view He looked forward to it having already seen us in Him before Creation was ever thought of. What we are saying is there is a time when we have made it ours, and we walk confidently in it. We've passed the driving test and God leads us out onto the roads. Now we have "our gospel", not somebody else's. Now we're going into action because we really know who it is who is living our life. Before, even as a Christian, we didn't really.

As well as the prophetic being pushed aside (now as unnecessary, because the perfect in Christ has come), the other big alarm bell was almost a brushing aside of spiritual history. There's no point in trying to claim anything with spiritual history other than this.....genuine spiritual history is wrought by God. It is impossible for me to work, it doesn't reflect on anything other than my "failure". It is the measure that He has worked in me by the power of His own faith, some measure of fusion. We are saying, not just that I am totally complete in my spirit in Christ, but some measure of Incarnation in me has occurred. And owning this , knowing this and declaring the possibility of this is the devil's worst nightmare. As it was when Jesus said "Follow Me." and "Come and see". Because we have gone beyond "faithing into something "Jesus has already completed at the Cross ,to KNOWING it IS HE who has done it in me, and continues to do it in me. If I for an instant slip back into a false independent position and claim that it is I of my own empowering...not only will I quickly fall, but the truth (certainly about such and such an area) is not in me.
I have absolutely no idea what people do with the verse Revelation 19:10 the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. We cannot even connect with the true Jesus and not be prophetic in some way or another. We are calling into being things that are not. We are pulling all the "done deals" out of heaven by faith...His faith.

So our epistemology is
what does our spirit say is true about what the Cross has done for us
what have I proved works in my life because I see God has worked victories
what do my brothers and sisters hold as Truth as we all walk together in the Light, which Nancy has pointed out is our Fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus....ie....a defined fellowship
and more specifically I would add
what emerges as Truth according to scripture in the context of the real Presence of God and the prophetic as we worship and wait on Him without agenda.
The Bible describes as mature those who have trained their senses according to righteousness.
This has nothing to do with works and everything to do with living with/alongside and experiencing the righteousness that is by grace alone. Put these sort in a meeting, they will not be happy with any other kind of fellowship, than the fellowship they "know" by experience with their Father and their friend Jesus.

Just cause your fantasy of life didn't come true, doesn't mean your dreams won't.

First posted by AC Welch on Facebook on Tuesday, 19 October 2010 at 22:29
Andre Rabe just posted this: God has invested everything He has, everything He is, in mankind. He has no other investment, no other interest, no other occupation than you! He believes in you, He is fully committed to you. "...How many are Your thoughts toward me, how vast the sum of them..." Ps 139:17



You know Merrill Thompson puts up a fantastic excerpt called "Kiss of the Spirit " by George Macdonald. (See at bottom of post) It begins:While one is yet only in love, the real person lies covered with the rose leaves of a thousand sleepy-eyed dreams, and through them come to the dreamer but the barest hints of the real person. A thousand fancies fly out, approach and cross, but never meet. The man and the woman are pleased, not with each other, but each with the fancied other......



The gist is that the realities of life can hit pretty hard and seem to breakdown all our previous myths.

But then something fantastic can occur. Just as we discover that our own selves are barely discovered wells of endless discovery....so is the well of our partner. We're not going to get bored is a very minimal way of explaining the reality. The reality can be increasingly GOB-SMACKING! We don't know the half of what we each contain, nor of the compound effect on each other of each other.



The same is true of Christianity, because as we soon discover....Christianity is All there is. If Christ is the Co-Creator. If Life is all God is.Then how is Christ taking over more and more of our life going to be anything less than AN exponential INCREASE in LIFE.

Are you going to get confused if I turn this upside down, inside out? You see even speaking this way round is a FALL-based view of things.

God kindly had Ezekiel write about the River vision from a FALL-based viewpoint.We enter at the shallows and eventually we go all the way in. The Tabernacle is a Fall-based manifesto: we enter in the East (symbolising sin, rebellion) and we walk in a westerly direction. These pictures are for our benefit only.



The actual truth is in Ephesians. It begins how everything is going to carry on.From the Cross onward we were plunged totally into another another Spirit reality FROM THE WORD GO! We are now seated in the heavenly places in Christ at the right hand of God the Father.

There's no progression. There's no argument. There's nothing to be done. The other pictures of the River and the Tabernacle are just for our spiritual "eyes" to readjust to the dazzling sunlight of what God has done for us - a bit like Chilean miners staggering out from the depths of a blind ,dark mine shaft.



We require different lengths of time to readjust to this new dazzling light.

All the failures, the losses, the breakdowns were not the sign of a "godless" universe. They were the sign of first a "godless" life, then a "godless" Christianity. But when we learn the Key, that Christ and He alone is our life, the lock turns and our life changes forever, from the inside out.

Psalm 45: The King's Daughter is all gloroius within, she's transformed from the Inside Out!!! (in one translation)



Our initial fantasy of life revolved around us thinking we were totally independent selves, choosing our own destiny for us. We tried to avoid any nastiness. We, like Lot tried to choose the nicest route to a good material lifestyle that required the least stretch of faith we could. Then gradually things started tumbling down around us.



After finding Christ, although our innards knew a different reality, we were at a loss to know how to change the outer. Many at this point settle down to their hymnsheet "When the roll is called up yonder...I'll be there!" And as far as earth is concerned they give up any thought that things can be different. This is just what Martha did when Jesus arrived 3 days late after her brother's death. She was a true evangelical. " I know he'll be raised up at the last day."

But the answer to why things don't work, is not :"They were never meant to"

The answer is : what we thought life was, what we thought was the way to live life ....was complete and utter baloney.

The only way life works is for Christ to live it in us. He has to completely re educate us on the things we were meant to have learnt from the ground up. And would have if we had fulifilled the first commandment: Love the Lord Your God with every last smidgen of you!!

Ofcourse, even that we cannot do without a revelation of God FIRST LOVING US.



When Abraham gave up his fantasies, God's dream took over. A plan so big issuing out of one son from his loins, we are still even on the natural level wading through the blessings that were on Israel.

When Jacob gave up at Peniel, God changed his name to Israel and he too expanded beyond any natural limitation.

When David said "I'll build you a house God." The prophet said initially "What a good idea!" But later the same day he phoned David up to say "God says you shall not build a house. God shall build you a house." And the glory of that house still continues to this day down the generations, and Acts and Revelation talk of David and the opening of a door that will never be shut.



So our fantasies may crumble to nothing, but our deepseated dreams actually turn out to be shallow compared with the FULL substance of glory that the Lord births through us....because IT ACTUALLY IS HIM birthing it through us.



If any have the patience or desire, you can learn more about this dream process in my 1989 message Third Level Christianity on the side of my blogpage .
But even this message is a pale shadow of the start of its realisation which among other places is happening here on blogs and Facebook.


Allen Mills that is so beautiful.
Tuesday at 22:34 ·Like Unlike · 1 person
Loading...Chris Welch thx Allen.God bless you
Tuesday at 22:41 · LikeUnlike · 1 person
Loading...Andre Oosthuizen Thanks Chris..good read...especially 'The only way life works is for Christ to live it in us. He has to completely re educate us on the things we were meant to have learnt from the ground up. And would have if we had fulifilled the first co...mmandment: Love the Lord Your God with every last smidgen of you!!
Ofcourse, even that we cannot do without a revelation of God FIRST LOVING US.'See more
Tuesday at 22:49 · LikeUnlike · 3 people
Loading...Pamela Donnan beautiful Chris - thank you!
Tuesday at 23:00 · LikeUnlike · 1 person
Loading...Mikkel Thomsen Wonderful word! Thanks for sharing Chris
Tuesday at 23:04 · LikeUnlike · 1 person
Loading...Patti Renwick I love this msg of Truth. Thankyou so much! Him in us....
Tuesday at 23:29 · LikeUnlike · 1 person
Loading...Rich Novek Fantastic, brother, simply fantastic!
Tuesday at 23:34 via Facebook Mobile · LikeUnlike · 1 person
Loading...Barbara Hughes Wow!!!! Insightful, I really like this. Thanks for sharing. :)))
Yesterday at 00:20 · LikeUnlike · 1 person
Loading...Judy Lawrence I had given up on dreaming and fantiesies. This is a good thing, for now He brings me dreams that are unspeakable and full of joy. Yet I long for Him to make them come true. Just like the little fairy tales,
My Prince has come. Thank you... Chris, lots to ponder.See more
Yesterday at 00:48 · LikeUnlike · 1 person
Loading...Rich Novek Amen Judy, love ya sis!
Yesterday at 00:55 via Facebook Mobile · LikeUnlikeJudy Lawrence Love you to Rich. Miss our chats.
Yesterday at 00:56 · LikeUnlikeSandra Tureaud Profound truth! thank you for sharing.
Yesterday at 01:24 · LikeUnlikeCathy Rheeder Absolutly flippen awesome.thanx chris.
Yesterday at 07:29 via Facebook Mobile · LikeUnlikeChris Welch Thankyou all for sharing and responding...probably as much a ministry as when any of us write an article.
Yesterday at 09:08 · LikeUnlikeOle Henrik Skjelstad Wow, Chris! This is pure glory! What an insight! And what a blessing to read! Thanks!
Yesterday at 09:28 · LikeUnlikeMerrill Thompson I reposted The Kiss of the Spirit.
Yesterday at 12:45 · LikeUnlikeCindi Estep Gob Smacking!!!! I love that we have been plunged totally into another another Spirit reality!!! Our dreams are His dreams and they have Become our reality.....Love you Chris♥
Yesterday at 14:43 · LikeUnlikeKim Flink sweet!! Im a dreaming again, restoration station beep beep!! I love that sweet Lord, precious almighty savior!!! Im just saying..... singing & dreaming, NO limits! thank you Chris! Shalom
Yesterday at 16:35 · LikeUnlikePeter Stanley Chris and I have been on very different journeys but I’m convinced that we have been drawn together for a purpose. Chris is painting a picture of how our fancies flee away and the realities of life seem to break down all our previous myths... – and a shared journey of discovery!

As Chris knows I have lived with Aspergers Syndrome all my life, and I’m now 75, but I only discovered this a couple of years ago. It was an exciting discovery because it helped to explain why I do things the way I do. Basically I have always lived life on an even keel with an almost total lack of emotion. It is said that most people with AS never marry. When I asked Barbara’s mother if we could get married she said she didn’t approve because I didn’t love her daughter – and with hindsight, in a traditional sense she was right – but we both needed each other and were drawn together in an Anglican church.

Imagine if you can, living on an even keel. Within three years of being married I was treasurer of the local Anglican church (for eight years) but became disillusioned with the lack of ‘radical’ Christianity. Later I became involved with a legalistic Sabbath keeping church that has not unreasonably been described as both a cult and a sect. For a time I was going to church on Saturday with my son while my wife was attending the Anglican church on Sunday with my daughter. I ‘knew’ I was right (how wrong can you be?). A couple of years later my wife joined me (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!). Nearly twenty years later (in 1995) the church announced (from the top) that much of their theology was misguided.

I cannot remember a time when I didn’t believe that God existed – but I have always been questioning what I was being taught. I was now being forced for the second time to reconsider just about everything I had ever been taught.

To cut a long story very short it was around 2005 that I began to recognise that my faith had been based almost entirely on head knowledge and almost no heart awareness – and that was quite a revelation for someone living with AS!

Back to Chris’s comments about the breakdown of all our previous myths, and his suggestion that our initial fantasy of life revolved around us thinking we were totally independent selves, choosing our own destiny for us.

In the 1960’s I was being trained as a lay reader by a former principal of a theological college. It took about 20 hours to reach the second chapter of Exodus, but it was only years later looking through some notes that I found we started at Genesis 12 – ignoring the MYTH and SYMBOLISM of the first 11 chapters!

I have long seen my life as living outside the goldfish bowl watching people living life based on making their own decisions on the meaning of good and evil – instead of living with the tree of life. Could it be that we have misunderstood the significance of the two trees? Why is so much of Christian theology based on the Fall of Adam? Genesis 3 says nothing about the transmission to humanity of Adam’s guilt! Jesus is described as the Redeemer before Creation. Doesn’t this suggest that God knew that Adam would fail?

History is full of stories of the rise and fall of empires – both physical and spiritual. There have been times of spiritual renewal and falling away – God doesn’t have grandchildren – second-hand knowledge isn’t the same. Could it be that God knows what he is doing – that our deep-seated dreams really are shallow compared to the full substance of glory that is being birthed in those who really do allow Jesus to live his life in and through us?See more
13 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 1 person
Loading...Chima Tasie Freeman Glorious and inspiring!!!
5 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 1 person




Merrill Thompson on Facebook
The First e-mail Bev sent me when she went on line,..THE KISS OF THE SPIRIT
Share
Sat at 13:45
KISS OF THE SPIRIT
by George MacDonald
While one is yet only in love, the real person lies covered with the rose leaves of a thousand sleepy-eyed dreams,

and through them come to the dreamer but the barest hints of the real person.

A thousand fancies fly out, approach and cross, but never meet.
The man and the woman are pleased, not with each other, but each with the fancied other.
The merest common likings are taken for signs of a wonderful sympathy, of a radical unity. But though at a hundred points their souls seem to touch, their contact points are the merest brushings, as of insect antennae.
The real man, the real woman, is all the time asleep under the rose leaves.
Happy is the rare fate of the true . . ..to wake and come forth and meet in the majesty of the truth, in the image of God, in their very being, in the power of that love which alone is being!

They love, not this and that about each other, but each the very other.
Where such love is, let the differences of taste, the unfitness of temperament, be what they may, the two must by and by be thoroughly one.
The negative and positive relation we live daily causes us to emerge from beneath the rose leaves and penetrate each other so as to have really seen and be seen.


It takes the negative to arouse each of us from our sleep.......
But the miracle of love that comes to birth each time forgiveness appears is truly the kiss of the spirit .

Monday 18 October 2010

A recent History of Psalm 24 Part Seven: Gate Lifting

I hope some of you are getting a bit more light as we go through this series? Please do not think of it as a rather quaint series of ideas written adhoc from the computer in my house.While you've been wading through, comfortably sipping the ideas, maybe listening to Ern's original message:
This is a brief outer description of this series.
A major major misunderstanding had been going on with one of our closest friends which involved leadership much more than I'd have looked for.
After a pause, I then shared a weekend with Andre Rabe and his wife with about 12-15 others in a retreat centre weekend. I did some sharing, while Andre did the main theme which was based on the great content of Francois's Mirror Translation of Hebrews.
Again, in my naivety I thought we'd flow together quite well, but as Sylvia Pearce and Nancy Gilmore often find we hit the usual Romans 7 block that occurs with people who are discovering who they are in Christ between Romans 3-5. We hit another present impasse...well kind of related I guess. That is if people believe everything is now....which at spirit level it is.....there's a complete blank drawn on Spirit process, and consequently as in Part 6, if Christ is the complete LOGOS Word, there's no room for Rhema, no room for the prophetic,no room for the NOW Word, all of which are exactly to do with our walk in the Melchizedek Order, experiencing the real Heavenly Tabernacle today!
Conversely, you can have such an eye on the prophetic that you are viewing everything still in terms of the false delusion of separation which was sown into our beings at the Fall. And these have been some of my latest conversations with a South African ministry at polar ends of the scale from Francois and Andre.

So you begin to see the immensity of the work the Holy Spirit is doing, which we've fudged round up until now in the larger conferences by inviting in very varied ministry angles and praying like crazy for the Holy Spirit to hold it all together, and ofcourse , largely He does. But as I wrote in Part 6 under comments, that time where we could all sit separately at God's table with 12 neatly sliced bits of Shewbread all separated out is coming to an end. God now expects us to be Una Cosa, to quote Jorge Pradas. ONE LOAF. He has made out of the TWAIN One New Man. Not Gentiles and Jews. Not Law and non-Law. Not even Spirit and Word.
But SPIRIT-WORD. He cancelled all division at the Cross. We are all ONE THING, members of one another.

Christ has been coming through me as a gate lifter all the while that the theory has been being articulated. And I'm not the only one. Processes are going on with Daniel Yordy and Rich and Linda Novek.....and I guess most of the rest who regularly chat here or on Facebook.

The thing I wanted to stress is that the more Christ comes through us, the more we are fixed into the mature Level of knowing Him in us,by us,through us......the more He is going to send His lightnings out into dark places, while sending out His Word of grace.

I do not hold with the theory that all we have to do is speak light, speak grace, speak the accomplished work of Jesus on the Cross. Why? Because if Jesus didn't in His earthly walk, why is it going to be different as He expresses His Life through us?

While I was with Andre, Jesus got me talking about several key areas that at the time seemed a bit random to me. It was only days later as Jesus shared with me the true background situation that I hadn't seen at all, that I understood more what He was trying to achieve.

Flick through Luke as I have done tonight. Realise that most of what is recorded are "assaults "on the Kingdom of Darkness. In the disciples' lives. In the multitudes of listeners. In the religious people. Look at Luke 9:57- 62. Someone said, "I will follow You wherever You go..."
Jesus never got the Word out, unravelling scrolls. Jesus didn't consult a YWAM DTS (Discipleship Training School) manual.
His reaction would have been immediate, from His belly. Lightning by the Spirit coming from the God Fire of His baptism in the Spirit flashing across to the man laying waste all his human pretensions and conceptions.....
The foxes have holes,and the birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.

The gospels are a record of the Spirit sayings, coming right out of Jesus mouth to dismantle(whoever was willing) the proud human gates raised up against the KNOWLEDGE of God.
People everywhere are struggling, working,jumping through hoops to try and get through to God.
Rip down a few of these gates by the Spirit of the Lord and guess what
The King of Glory enters in.
Not a far off separated King either. More like a dial on a radio just being turned at last to the PS24 MHZ frequency of God's ALWAYS ON....Glory!

Facebook Community and Cindi Estep


Some are using Skype and Conferencing already. Many of us have not "faced" the technology yet and have yet to stare it down and say "Ha! Think you can defeat me? huh?".

So for many this is a shock how we all look in real time!!!! But here's a small selection all wanting to express some love back to our dear friend Cindi Estep.

Ginger Pearce left us all suddenly, and the outpouring she received on facebook was a stunning
Life Check to her personal family, who had no idea of Ginger's reach. So Leo writes
"Yeah, Me too Libby, just the other day Jess & I were reminiscing about Ginger over the phone, & we were awed by the outpouring after she left us so we agreed "better to catch em on this side of eternity". It was just the shove I needed.
Best U.Leo " (Leonard Fredette)



My greeting 1



My Greeting 2
Apparently Windows Moviemaker doesn't like Blackberry vid files so you can't join them!!











Friday 15 October 2010

A Recent History of Psalm 24 Part Six : The Ancient Door of Control

This is a post about the spirit of control...control for short.

Control is when you pray for hours by your dying mother's bed when all the time the doctors behind your back have skillfully pre-designed when she will die of cancer in their palliative care .


Anti-control is when Jesus used to clear everyone out of the room before speaking a word of faith.

Control is when you are led to play a music CD with cutting edge Kingdom lyrics in a meeting and you find a CD has already been loaded by the sound technician and that Mariette has already sewn up the entire meeting the moment we came in.(Thank goodness most of this is gone)

Anti-control includes a great many of Jesus miracles strategically planted to expose control and establish Kingdom, or KING-DOM. The KING-DOM is opposite of control.

Control originated when someone reached up for a fruit in a garden.Control is the opposite of Proverbs 3:5 instead it is rather :Trust in your insight with all your heart and do not rely on your Lord. Control is your inner agenda where you aren't "seeing God".


Control is the hidden mesh that directs you that has nothing to do with your new life or anyone else's new life in Christ.

Control is the biggest single reason why Baptism in the Holy Spirit cannot take place.
Control is rebellion.
Control is as witchcraft.
Control only understands pyramids and submission to that pyramid.

It just does not "get " freewill,family,fatherhood ,unique identity. In fact EVERYTHING God's family is about. So CONTROL has the earthly appearance of "maturity" and looks down its nose at the KINGDOM
which is not professional enough
not slick enough
too spontaneous
too open-hearted

Artists,creatives,the spontaneous lovers,the generous are hated by CONTROL
In religious settings
everything a prophet / seer is
everything a prophet/seer does and stands for is
ANATHEMA to controlling people. Their hidden "mesh" continually breathes out slaughterings though on the surface many controllers appear jovial and kind-hearted.

The ONLY One of the 12 tribes chosen to lead the Kingdom because technically they don't lead,
well ......as far as control can understand or perceive anyway
is the TRIBE of JUDAH. They go first. They praise.They worship.They sing. They "see". But they DO NOTHING the spirit of "Control" understands as leading.

In the 1970s when God was re-establishing praise and leading a whole generation out of a spiritual and secular Babylon, because Control didn't recognise them as "leaders", but in the Kingdom they in fact were the spearhead,
people like Dave Bilbrough, Dave Mansell,Graham Kendrick infiltrated every denomination with their songs, and like Pied Pipers lured a whole generation from certain spiritual death in the denominations, until more mature now in God, the people returned to affect and change the Evangelical Alliance, and the old mainstream denominational churches with spiritual events like New Wine and courses like Alpha.
Control is no more about control than the political spirit is about politics, and party spirit is about parties....well birthday cake type ones.

Control in our brain is about being a catalyst for right functioning motor skills, walking,reaching,standing. The spirit of control is more like rusty seized up brakes on a bike. It tries to block the Incarnation of God in flesh. It began with Adam. It wrestled with the 2nd Adam. And now it wrestles with every human alive, but above all the Church, the (meant to be)pure manifestation of Christ in many-membered form. The meaning of Satan is "Blocker"/"Resister".


Control in a woman destroyed a team of functioning elders in Amersham Baptist Church in 1973 and reinstated the same Pastor Pyramid the Holy Spirit was breaking apart,for another 40 years.....
Control is an Ancient Door in Psalm 24 .
Control is the biggest single reason a man can train for 6 years in a Bible college learning the ways of the Lord instead, and still in 38 years never have been involved publically in leadership or preaching.
Control is when certain South African church streams believe LOGOS has the pagan Greek meaning LOGIC or THOUGHT instead of the Hebrew idea of BEING.

Control meant Rob Rufus had to get the heck out of his own people in South Africa. But control is also the reason the Holy Spirit sent him to Hong Kong....to declare the Kingdom in a city of control. It may be Rob Rufus never gets to be KING in his own "tea party" there, but with renewed authority goes back to "terrify control" in South Africa. (the craftsmen shall terrorise the nations). Jesus was a craftsman.

Control is the belief that Life needs some help for it to happen.

Dr Challenors Grammar School ,Amersham was all about secular control, intellectual control. When this lying facade wore thin having achieved 11 A's and effectively done what they were looking for at age 12 I started to "see through the whole sham" , because my "person" was not respected and I sought a better way. Now I perceive slightly better acknowledgement of personhood there when I returned for the Reunion last week. This is happening in a lot of education at the moment thankfully. Probably because my generation has risen up and wanted to change things.

Every spiritual gift is given to break control or move contrary to control to set people free.
The police gift Discernment of spirits is "Control's" worst and greatest enemy. Even prophets can be deceived by the friendly Angel of Light face of Control. But the police gift nabs it every time!
Gifts of the Spirit to set people free is only 50% of it. If that's all we're missing it.
The gifts of the Spirit (rightly used) were always there FOR THE USER TOO.
Why?
To get you out of the clutches of your own "spirit of control" faster than you can say "Svengali".
You are your own worst nightmare. The meshes of wrong believing scrawled right across the Temple walls of your Holy Place(Ezekiel8:10) had nothing to do with any truth about you, or Jesus, or the Kingdom. Thankfully we don't all get to "see" every jot and tittle of everybody's scrawlings, the Heavenly Father values our individual privacy too much. But sometimes when there's just one of those BIG BLOCKS that are acting like an airleak in a space ship, endangering your faith life and those surrounding you....the Holy Spirit can send in gentle doctors. Your scrawlings wont find them gentle though. "Just leave me alone to my controlling desires!!!!Clear off!!!" Since when did Darkness welcome Light? "Oh so glad you could come! Here take a seat, won't you?"
As Francois and Andre teach, by FAR the BIGGEST source of healing to all of us , is to flood our Temple Walls with LIGHT. Light about who the Father planned and created us to be FROM BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF CREATION in Eternity. If we're not sure we're sure we're sure we're caught up in heavenly places in Christ Jesus....We don't want to be scratching around our inward walls. The Charismatic church has done far too much navel gazing.
WHICH, BY THE WAY is Another Form of Control.That's why, the FIRST thing we do is see Jesus, who made for a time a little lower than the angels is NOW crowned with glory and honour.....THE FIRSTBORN of a whole ton of brethren and sistren!!!!!!

Praise , worship and adoration are all "out of control".
Key of David meetings are the opposite of control.
Prophecy, like the gift of Tongues is thankfully out of control. You may know the gist but if leaders ask you first, you can bamboozle them with something that sounds good to them, then you can let them have it from the cutting edge of your spirit....and hope for another week at least you won't be thrown out.

A man once had " control" leeching at his heart to do with something dreadful he had been involved in in his past . (I only found out later, that it had been an extraordinarily violent act). He was a main leader and was preaching on brokenness, saying when he was born again, he thought he'd been completely broken by the Lord, but now God was showing him again through Watchman Nee's writings that many areas were "left unbroken"........(or for this post's purposes....left in the "spirit of control") While leading us in prayer God gave me the strangest thing I've had to do up until now to "break this control of fear and shame over his life" which was dominating this "mesh" of his inner seeing as he sought to work "for God". God said I had to reverse my hand in the manner of a floppy glove (like the old duelling challenges) and strike his cheek while saying this:
"This is a Holy moment. Today I say to you that the shame of the violence of your past is taken from you..."thwack. You can only do this sort of thing in God. Do not get it wrong. In God's economy of grace , such an act of His is of much more worth to the Lord than a long prison sentence, and I doubt if anything could ever be proved anyway. God is about setting everyone free from within. Any success in the prison system comes not from the bars, but from inward anguish and change. A great many behind physical bars always remain behind inner bars and never change.

Control was when the overall leader gathered all his elders together to frame me as having committed the sin of Aaron and Miriam before Moses, rising up in rebellion. As you can guess this was so wrong, it was 180 degrees wrong. But the Lord is my cause and He fights for me.
Control was when this leader put a "Gentile curse" on me and after being thrown out, the next day a car drove straight into me and across me as I drove. But God had greater control and I am still here. Never underestimate the power of a person's wrong controlling decision though, especially if in leadership. Daniel Yordy is still climbing out physically from a similar leader's curse incident in a kind of sister church.

Control is when after 6 months daily praying for a paralysed girl in 1988 the Lord indicates she is to be healed in Israel of all places. You believe for the tickets for her mother,you and the girl after checking out the medical situation. After 3 attempts you believe for visas, and God puts you in touch with an Israeli believer who supplies them. Control is when the pastor directs my church brother who is my paying lodger to steal the air tickets from my own doormat out of concern for my state of mind. Control works in pyramidal behaviour....anything out of this aegis is considered a "state of mind". Those under communism and fascism (both equally bankrolled by Rothschild banks) are aware of this.

Cares,pleasures and riches seek only control and are the last barrier to 30fold,60fold and 100fold harvest quality soil.(parable of the Sower)

Control is the opposite of mature Christianity.This is described to Peter as "but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." John 21:18

Control is an understanding of the Bible, the Word, that holds to one set of values only because it comes from a mindset that seeks to hold all understanding in the left-brain. The Bible is to be held in a pure heart by the Holy Spirit alone. Bits of articulation are enabled as the "gift of utterance" is granted. We can enquire. We can reason. We can doubt honestly before the Lord. But the moment our faith level controls our Word output, we preach according to reason not according to the Holy Word. The Holy Word is NOT the Bible per se, it is an inner wisdom birthed in us by "training our senses according to righteousness". See the Orb on the Bench picture- a bit random but I'm the son of Physics teachers.

Understanding the Bible is more to do with our inner "seeing mesh" being broken, and by an inner willingness to say "Yes Lord be it unto me according to your Word". John 7:17 If anyone is willing to do His(the Father's) will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.

Rather Bible knowledge and wisdom is unlocked in chunks like levels and missions in a computer game, as we go through further conversions of inner seeing on our insides. I went from a rather rusty surface understanding of a few basic Sunday school type stories from within Methodism to doing a Potted version of Watchman Nee's "The Normal Christian Life" after conversion and Baptism in the Spirit in a 3 month period when I was 13. Understanding the Bible has next to nothing to do with hours, but has everything to do with relating to Jesus the Living Word.

Control cannot operate in faith.
Control does not understand, see or move in the Melchizedek order.
The Kingdom is run from the Melchizedek order.
Andre Rabe writes many excellent pieces of Bible wisdom. He writes a phrase that is good and bad at the same time. From memory it was saying God has spoken His final Word in His Son.There is nothing beyond this. So to get involved with "fashionable words and winds of doctrine" is now irrelevant because the complete Word has been spoken. The good side of this is that now we have to do with our completeness in Jesus and God's completeness in us. It is all to do with Jesus the complete LOGOS in us and not bits and pieces moving the Church here and there. This solidifies our message and is more in keeping with the 3rd level or stage of growth in 1 John 2: 12 (ff) we know Him who is from the beginning so we're not going to be pushed around by people saying Christ is Lo here or Lo there and rushing everywhere.

Got that!
That is good.
Suppose your South African Reformed mindset is not completely broken though in your "mesh" underneath surface thinking.
When God directs you to "Go up to Kadesh-Barnea today!" You are not going to go. Because it is a wind of doctrine to you. You are going to despise the Rhema gifts of the Spirit because in your folly you hold to a mental stronghold image that your left-brain somehow holds the complete LOGIC or LOGOS of God.
Any sense of "Now" Word or "Now" Power is anathema to you. Because for you the Kingdom is not run in the Melchizedek order, it is run through something like the Greek understanding of LOGOS in your left-brain.
The Logos if it resides anywhere in us, Proverbs indicates, is in our inner parts. Guard your hearts for out of them flow the wellsprings of life.
Everything prophetic comes from here. Life in meetings comes from here. Our life lived in Jesus comes from here. A Greek LOGOS mindset has no frame of reference for this anti control statement:
Revelation 19:10
"For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."
While Andre and Francois have their South African mesh in place they cannot even hear the inner sound of anything in this Psalm 24 series. It is like trying to describe colours to colourblind people. They say,by the side of their comfortable Dutch settler hearthside or whatever,"Things unroll in a steady fashion." There is no prophetic moment like Moses saying
Tonight we leave Egypt.....eat unleavened bread....no time for leavening."
In a Dutch Reformed (I guess) setting there is all the time in the world for leavening. There is no prophetic at all.We go when we have enough understanding Lord! Actually they should not address Jesus as Lord, because there is no concept of Lordship here. LOGOS as channelled alone through what my the left-brain can understand becomes a pseudo Lord instead. It is control. In one form.

When I address the South African prophet on Facebook ,Mark Labushagne , his mesh, his control is completely 180 degrees the other way. He moves out of "separatism". It's an out there, outside type of God ....everything that would make Francois and Andre cringe when they think of spiritual gifts....which they try not to.
So to Mark, because my friendly Rottweiler picks up on his "mesh" I attack him almost as if I'm not the least bit interested in prophecy.I am very interested in prophecy but not prophecy that upholds and maintains the lying position of Genesis 3.

As a result Mark is using his natural flair at pyramid building to effectively run a corporation of prophets (not profits which would be worse). Peter Stott and Graham Cooke were in this game 20 years ago and have repented and moved on to the real Kingdom. Actually one reason many mistake for a lack of respect in me to Peter, which isn't true, is while they were busy playing these games I got badly burnt. So I 've been watching Peter and Mariette like a hawk since.
Whenever they revert back to "control" and the Spirit gives me something to do I take great pleasure in doing it.

Peter has changed enormously. If you can imagine a car dealer turned prophet, you have some idea what he was like before cancer and near death.


The true LOGOS does not know or even perceive control either. It ignores it. It sets itself against it. It rises up against it and eats it for breakfast.

2ndlevel growth still has control embedded deeply within it. David ignored the Word and exercised "control" to get a new cart to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. The Cart stumbled (interestingly enough) at the threshing floor. Someone perished while putting his hand out to save it. You don't "control" God's Presence. Andre put his hand out a bit this weekend.

Because it was only the other day that Jesus told me about the traditional churches they are from, I had no idea what anathema I was declaring this weekend by the Spirit. Virtually everything I said would have touched raw nerves.

The reason God's true church is not built in a pyramid was obliquely referred to 30 years ago by the Christian piano shop owner.I had no idea what he was talking about at the time but this is what he said:
The reason the eldership at Emsworth is so anointed and functions so well together is that if you took an inner direction arrow pointing through their collective heart it points directly at the throne of God. In other words there is safety in teams of called leaders, probably for the precise reason they are so different.
If you put Mark Labuschagne and Andre Rabe together, tying Andre in a strait-jacket first, then invited in Bonnie Morris and Stephanie Macentire, then yanked in Daniel Yordy and Rich Novek, plus some more of the women on Facebook, you'd start to get a glimpse of the true unfettered Word. But Andre and Francois on their own....forget it. We'd be sending an aeroplane to fetch out all the prophets before they were murdered Idi Amin style.

The reason Facebook is so good is it recognises no stream, no Kingdom box. It is pure rattling of the Ezekiel bones. But one day whether Andre and Francois like it or not the second prophesying is going to come, and this army shall stand up clothed in flesh and glory! But don't tell them that it will overexcite their left-brains, and they won't be able to concentrate for their next country they preach into.