http://www.angelfire.com/tn/sharingmygift/Mar212010.htmlGrant Jeffrey books
Barry Smith's videos on Youtube
John Hagee
Daniel Yordy's writings on facebook and on his website.
And ofcourse The Bible!
These are all sources of information about the fulfilment or near fulfilment of Bible prophecies.
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You know the primary reason Norway has not joined the European Union is not monetary, is not because of German War Occupation...is not because they don't like parmesan cheese.
No, Norwegians like Americans, preach the whole Bible in their churches.
Anglicans do too...but when they reach bits they don't believe..their vicars explain why that passage is not applicable today thus nullifying the Word of God at many strategic intervals.Revelation talks about people who add to and take away from the scriptures!And it's not good!
Norwegian Christians take Bible prophecy very seriously, and they take the multiheaded beast in revelation to mean the revival of the Roman Empire with a new name: the European Union.
And this could be so. Evangelist David Hathaway also believes this. And one of the first things I learned in our renewed Baptist Church in 1972 in Amersham was "Do not be fooled by Ted Heath when he says the Common Market is purely an economic Union. He is lying."
Well, years later it has proved true, and we now know for certain that Ted Heath was soft-soaping England in order to get the European Union underway. His masters would have told him to do this. It would have been one of the conditions of his rule of office. It has also since come out that one of the key media figures of the "Swinging Sixties", the then famous Simon Dee, whose show was as influential in the UK as say David Letterman in the USA, was suddenly deposed never to be seen again, probably because he held strong views against Britain and Europe. Which would make perfect sense as we look back at the ruthlessness with which the EU has been imposed on us in Europe. My German friends certainly did not wish it, nor do I suspect many in other nations.Not actually I think for the reasons "they" think we wouldn't. The actual idea of a Europe that isn't continually warring is a great idea. It's just that the secular self-appointed leadership both hidden and public don't acknowledge God at all....and the last structures of any size that behaved this way exterminated more of their own numbers than any other recorded nations anywhere in history. Namely Russia.China .Cambodia.Hands up anyone who doesn't think those who don't acknowledge God, purely on track record alone, are up to the job?
We now know from Christians like Barry Smith and Grant Jeffreys of the role the secret group the Bilderbergers has been playing behind the scenes. Goodness knows how he managed it, but the secular Jewish journalist Jon Ronson managed to produce a book and TV series researching whether there was any truth in the Conspiracy theories.He described the stare Peter Mandelson gave him as he was chauffeur driven past Ronson. "Chilling" is the word he used, outside the secret Bilderberger Hotel Conference, that year in Portugal.
My take on this is to try and go behind the scenes and view what happens in the Spirit. More on that in a bit.
So with all of the above authors excepting Daniel Yordy and the Bible, who I believe are in another category, I applaud the attempt at least to share in a concise form all the many scriptures regarding prophecy in scripture.
But if anything highlights where we are in the things of God it is our attitude to prophecy. In my blog I explain that there are Christians who go through the motions of Christianity but have never yielded their lives to God: whether your use of the phrase is "being born again" or "regenerate" or asking "Jesus into your life", or "accepting Jesus as your Saviour and Lord". Anyhow, all these phrases are intellectual non starters for you, whereas for those who have crossed the spiritual line each phrase leaps in the belly with an AMEN! I call this cultural Christianity Zero level Christianity. It has no time for prophecy. The very idea would be ludicrous. And this is more or less the absolute belief level of England.
If you are "converted", have had some sort of crisis moment or moments where you know inside yourself you have crossed the line, more or less immediately you begin to take the Bible very seriously.
You think, well if I was wrong about being born again, how many other things am I wrong about?..and you begin searching the scriptures. I call this sort of stage, well not me actually, John calls it the children stage. We know our sins are forgiven. And we begin to be aware of the possibility of Christ's return and other prophetic fulfilments.
In Dr Challoner's Grammar School,Amersham, one of the cleverest boys was the head boy David Foster.(5 years older I think)
Before Christ ,BC, he used to come into our classroom and share with us the crudest of jokes. He and I loved them. After God hit our school, most of the Christians were in our year, but one guy who suddenly got hit in Chorleywood...the same church that spawned New Wine and indirectly Soul Survivor and later Mark Stibbe...was Dave Foster. One of the FIRST things he did was to subject the school to an assembly on the incredible nature of the fulfilment of scriptural prohecies, includiing Israel's return to the land. His delivery was awful and most fell asleep...but this is an example of the power of conversion on our understanding. He was a clever guy, but up until the week before, prophecy was meaningless to him.
When we have the baptism in the Holy Spirit, after an initial giddy onrush of power and anointing, oftentimes like Jesus, we are driven into what feels to us like a barren wilderness. Yet all the time Jesus speaks His words of promise over us that we are Victors in Jesus name. John in 1 John 2:12 calls this the young men stage and he also declares the same promise "You have overcome the evil one".
John Hagee ministers very much in this level and has a view on prophecy to match. Everything tends to be external to the believer. This is very much the flavour of the angelfire post above. Well, the thing is, we have to learn the scriptures first. Darin Hufford has just done a great post about the Bible in the Free Believer's group on Facebook, where he makes it clear he has spent up to 7 hours a day in the Bible at certain periods. He does nothing by halves. My view on Hagee and Barry Smith, and a lot of the teachers Morris Cerullo brings in is that at least the very real fulfilments of prophecy are being noted and the unfulfilled ones learned about. Hmmm, you're thinking..."I'm hearing a but"
Yes. But this.
We are now moving onto the third stage of growth as a worldwide Church. We have done nearly a hundred years of 2 twin houses of Israel. The Keswick evangelical stream of the house of Israel (you know I mean the church) and also the Pentecostal/Charismatic house of Israel. Two gloriously split houses, enjoying the freedom in Christ to slag each other off and dwell in two completely separate valleys. What if I tell you that this sort of describes the Holy Place. The Young men stage of Christianity.
Perhaps we "know" the Word to a deep level. Perhaps we are able to flow in the Spirit really well.
You'll note that in the tabernacle, in this second area there is both the shewbread , which is like the Word preached, and there is also the goldenlampstand with the lamps fuelled by the oil, which is like the gifts of the Spirit. As Ern Baxter told us, it is absolutely no coincidence that THERE ARE NO windows in the Holy Place. The only light comes from the lampstand.
So as well as crossing the definite spiritual line that takes us into the outer court, where we become "knowers of God" on our insides, or born again, Jorge Pradas told us that there was also a line of the Spirit we all have to cross. This is where we learn to run our meetings in the realm of the Holy Spirit. We don't sing songs just cos we like em. We don't share our favorite passages of scripture because they tickle us. Leaders don't just preach because the clock has reached 11am, or 11.30 am or whatever. Everyone only does things because God is moving each one to do things at the right time.
Leaders, as well as being feeders, who have gone ahead in the Spirit and are able to feed others with what they need at the right time....they are also "facilitators". Wise people who know how to maintain the flow of the Spirit. If Havant is anything to go by, they spend longer and longer apparently doing nothing while everyone else but them gives/shares/dances/proclaims/prays/whatever whatever.
If your church looks nothing like this...and yet you feel you are at this stage....and want to grow...
Read Jack Fortenberry's book "Corinthian Elders" or Frank Viola's books. Read Corinthians 12-14 again.
Read and infer things from the other New Testament letters. And all the rest of the church world... fear God. God decided how He was going to run His church. He didn't ask you for your opinion. He said "Repent,be baptised and be filled with the Holy Spirit." So the Holy Spirit runs the churches, not men. In the end I suppose everyone has to decide what they want. Maurice Smith calls elderly saints "twinklers" Well, in evangelical setups it may take 70 years to become a true "twinkler".
It only took Jesus 3 years to produce "twinklers". So you decide. Do you still want the evangelical "hymn sandwich model"? Or are you going to bow the knee to Jesus, give up, and let Him use the specially assigned agent to build the church? The Holy Spirit. That may also mean changing "warehouse" churches too. Star preachers out the front is not quite what is meant by the Holy Place. In the Holy Place design it's a table. A table is for all the tribes. And a table is for sharing.How many toes am I treading on?
So where is all this going? Well it's going to the third level.
What I am saying is everything now changes in the third level.
Not least how we understand prophecy.
End time prophecy will ONLY be a scaled up version of the way Jesus was framed in His phony trial.
The spirit that got into Herod's mind, into Pontius Pilate's mind, into all the Jewish people's mind went they shouted for Barabbas never left the Earth. The people involved died and have gone down in written history as fools...but the lying spirit lives on to cause greater havoc another day!!!
In 1973 or so Basilea Schlink wrote "Eve of Persecution". When I was in Darmstadt in 74 she was instructing us how near Chairman Mao was to finalising his plans for Invasion in Europe. She herself disappeared while I was there and went away to fast and pray.
Singlehandedly probably , as a third leveller Christian, she was probably doing battle in the heavenlies over some of these proposed threats.
Just as Rees Howells gained us more time by doing battle in the Spirit during World War Two, probably Basilea was being used to gain us more time in Europe. I surmise from what I know, but Mao's proposed plans are actually now referred to in Jung Chang's book on Mao. Instead, within a few short months Kissinger and Nixon were visiting Mao, and one of the great reversals of 20th Century "just" occurred, as China then took tentative steps on modernising trade links with the West.
The Church really has no idea what power is invested in the third level. The Holiest of Holies level.
Now we know Jesus has all power. But He looks for men and women to give themselves totally, to exercise that power here on earth. That's what thirdlevellers do. It's their job description. They may not look much. I mean does Yoda impress you? Well in the same way...Norman Grubb doesn't look much on You Tube. Nor did Basilea really. I bet Watchman Nee and Witness Lee would never make a catwalk in Paris. But a few hours in their presence, blasts you onward for the rest of your life.
Here's a story about Norman. He died in his late 90s, but around the twenties and his twenties, he spent a little while with Jessie Penn Lewis...who was already a thirdleveller by this time. Now Norman had realised in the Congo that he needed more than he had faced up with a mission field with his father in law CT Studd. On Jessie's agenda was that Norman needed to be baptised in the Spirit. Well that didn't happen. Not as Jessie had intended. Perhaps it's partly the intellectual evangelical approach of a student at Cambridge who God then called to missions.
Be that as it may...during those couple of hours he was just in the presence of Jessie, something arguably greater occurred which will probably go down in heaven as one of those earthly events in time that sealed history. Jessie, almost against her personal agenda at the time, yet entirely by the Spirit imparted the secret of the third level to Norman...there and then. Just 2 short hours. And by talking on a different subject too....
Eighty years later we are able to articulate what went on and what must go on if a believer, and from thence, the whole Body, is to cross that third and final line that is the Third level or Holiest of Holies.
Before now, no Christian group or denomination , certainly TV ministries, are able to adequately preach on what went wrong in Genesis 3, and what went right at the Cross.
We simply don't want to hear. Our eyes glaze over just as they did when someone first tried to tell us about Jesus. It becomes one of the clearest evidences of the work of Satan to blind our eyes and cover our ears...as described in Ephesians and many other places. Part of our condition we inherited was what Proverbs describes in Chapter 1 as "scoffers"...we became "scoffers". The same difficulty a parent has in instructing impressionable youngsters, that actually having sex with all and sundry really isn't a good idea...BIG TIME...
Is the same difficulty that anyone has saying to an alcoholic...I think you have drunk enough. The same steely unwillingness to hear. The same repeated denial of the awfulness of their condition...that they are in fact hooked....comes bouncing back to the loving friend or parent in the form of scoffing.
Proverbs 1 describes the path of a scoffer. Wisdom is crying out its message clearly and in full view. But it is neither heard nor enacted upon. Thus begins a cycle of what you sow, you reap. And right in the middle of reaping, wisdom is not to be found...or if it is, it is just laughing that you could be so stupid not to listen. Ouch . Double Ouch. Triple Ouch.
And this is how this universe is constructed. When we rebelled it wasn't a choice between a good and bad tree, and we chose the bad one. The opposite of freedom wasn't anarchy. The opposite of freedom was to be caught in a mechanism that is caged up in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
What we reap we sow. And if its bad stuff...the Tree of Good laughs at us. Just as we scorned wisdom, it now laughs at us.
But Jesus is outside of that. Quite outside of that. Because He is feeling intently our pain. And loving us all the more in our distress.And in our helpless cry of desperation He seeks to break through with light, with grace, with the good news of what He's done for us.
Now the good that He has done for us has three levels of depth. Broken people like Mary Magdelan, like drug addicts, like prisoners...are so shattered often, that Jesus can go straight to the ground zero level of a person's predicament and take them straight to the level where they realise that there is no independent life. They see that even the"good" that they thought they were doing was still only part of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil infrastructure...and that it wasn't in reality God's own life...and ultimately this Tree still led them astray.
Both the Pilgrim's Progress episode, (where in total abjection and failure Bunyan's character Christian throws himself down at the Cross and is finally able to lay his burden down,) and also the image in the Tabernacle of the Altar of Incense before the Holy of holies are the same picture. Nothing that we are, be it "good" or bad is acceptable. As at the end of Romans 7 we cry in our ultimate of lows "Who then can set me free from this law of sin and death?"....and implied in this "who can ultimately set me free from this "me" that I hate so much.
Then we see the thing we least wanted anyone to tell us. We are NOT gods in our own right. We are containers. The one we have been hating so much wasn't us. In actual fact the target of our "self-hate"was the devil's spirit that was empowering us all the while we had the false belief we were "gods" in our own right. As we see this, we adopt the more humble true reality which IS the nature of God anyway...to take the lower place. We see now we are empty vessels that are now going to be empowered by, operated by Christ. And as Christian found in Bunyan's Progress that's when the fun starts....well to use boy type imagery.
That's when we go into action.
That's when we put on the armour.
In the secondlevel our foundation for ministry is decidedly dodgy. I said to Stuart Wentworth, in 1992, we had been building on jelly. Everything we did was still believing we were a "separate"I , a person empowered in their own right. Bunyan doesn't even acknowledge this period, only giving Christian the ministry armour later, the other side of the Cross. But you will notice that the pilgrim has been travelling for some time before he even gets to the cross.
In the late eighties we were all shocked and appalled by TV ministries falling into various scandals, but the truth is, unless we preach a thirdlevel gospel that explains the complexity, subtlety and depth of how sin works, why should we be surprised when Holy Spirit ministries still fall in this way?
The disciples all ministered in the power of the Holy Spirit, but still didn't really know who they were yet, so come the Cross weekend just about all of them denied Jesus, and none more so than the one who was going to open the Keys to the Church in Acts 2, Peter.
So in end time prophecy terms what will happen?
Winkie Pratney's Discipleship Training manual for Youth With A Mission described how Judas was with Jesus 3 years yet never got his love for money sorted. He was in a place of prime temptation. He was their treasurer. So at the right time, when the devil wanted, he was able to hook into Judas's lust for money, and was able to "buy" him for the task that he will forever be known for in history.
In the" Eve of Persecution" Basilea Schlink said we should be preparing ourselves now. We should "Watch and Pray" lest there be still in us any hook that will endanger our life in the coming times.
Not one of the protaganists used to "frame" Jesus knew that they were to be set up as stooges in the devil's great plan to destroy Jesus. And the devil himself had no clue of the Father's greater plan to raise Jesus up after three days and destroy the power of sin for all time...should people believe on Jesus Name.
So Herod, Pontius Pilate,Judas,the gathered throng of Jews....all were hooked in so easily...to kill Jesus.
Every single one of them got up that morning thinking they were an independant being, beholden to none, and a "god of their own choosing as regards their personal destinies"
But every single one WAS WRONG. Like cybermen in Dr Who...the command was given from the Devil himself,and instead of going down in history as great men accomplishing great things, each's story is read out from Bibles all over the world as complete idiots used to kill the King of Glory.
The point Jesus is making in chapters such as chapter 24 of Matthew, when He says "one family member shall cheerfully give up another family member" and they shall do it fully believing it is God...
is the subtlety with which each of us can be bought to try and destroy the plan of Jesus in the earth.
As long as we walk in the spirit of error which says "I am a god in my own right. I choose my life. I live by my own power...even now as a Christian"....then zip........Satan can hook you at any time to do whatever he wishes through you....so you too go down in the history books -
in the same way that Martin Luther, Zwingli and Calvin were all used to murder saints...
in the same way that Catholics and Protestants have murdered each other without a thought,
and actually neither large group knows that God has in fact now moved on anyway....rebuilding His Church such that the way those older churches run now nolonger has any relevance at all....because their whole pattern flies in the face of all the ways the New Testament describes the way people are trained and matured.
In a more benign way, in that Ian McCulloch was not killed...but this same spirit was at work to throw good Brethren people like him off mission fields just because they believed in and had experienced Baptism in the Spirit.
Basically, I am saying in these end times, Satan can do what he likes just as long as we are still hooked up in his Genesis 3 lie. At any point he can use any Christian to turn against his brother and fulfil the scriptures Jesus talked about.
The secondlevel understanding of prophecy is naive. It is all out there at arms length, very like Peter's attitude was with Jesus "Who me? I will never deny you. I would never be involved in negative prophecy fulfilment. You know me Lord." Jesus DID know Peter and he said while "seeing in the Spirit","Satan is trying to sift you, but I have prayed for you."
Jesus knows us too. But He also knows the power emanating from His Cross, which is able to conform us to the very same type of walk that Jesus had....Him as a container for the Father's life, us as containers for the Son's life. And this for me makes far more sense of prophecy and the purposes of God in the Church than any half-baked American attempt at whisking the church away to be with Jesus when it is only half-finished!!!!
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First appeared as a Facebook note
