Showing posts with label Graham Pulkingham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Graham Pulkingham. Show all posts
Thursday, 25 June 2026
Monday, 28 December 2020
How Acts 2 IS the HOLY of HOLIES on legs!!
This morning's Facebook posts on what it is we are actually a part of.
1
The way Facebook works as all you guys know is by participation in the form of a response . A like . The like then gives tacit acceptance to a flow of posts . Can I just say , that I am through with the solo ministry thing . This is a figment of everybody’s imagination . There is no such thing in the Kingdom . You get sent out in minimums of twos . Perhaps not in Christianity , but when you are preaching Kingdom you do . Can I also say I am through with Romans 3 to 5 ministry . Just to be clear there I mean the isolated form of ministry that it is , taken out of all context of the whole of the rest of Romans . Can I also say I am through with women leaping out of “ socialisation “ into an esotericism that involves Grand Masters and angels and lights and stones and crystals and kundilini and chakras and third eyes . What I am interested in is people who know how taking up the Cross works , how Genesis 3 is a lie , how we have died and it is no longer I that live , and this being so true that we have moved from death to life and are inside each other . We are like disciples helping each other with nets . As marvellous as Rodney Howard Browne, Benny Hinn are ... they aren’t actually part of that . As marvellous as all these ladies are finding life beyond the strictures of Law , and male pyramid societies , finding flow and Romans 3 to 5 life ........ and as a common theme loads of ladies club together ...... But are they together really ? The together of the Kingdom really really is the destruction of the “ lone - I “ from Genesis 3. It’s not just where we find each other as Grace covered people . There’s any number of churches of 15-35 year olds as was Rob Rufus church in Hong Kong all drinking of the grace message around 2008-12. But you notice it was still one leader doing all the ministering . If it’s genuine then I guess like Jesus after about 42 months there will be now 12 going off and doing the same . Except it isn’t is it ? Jesus wasn’t ministering out of a single shred of Genesis 3 consciousness . He was transmitting pure Kingdom . He had no “ lone - I “ consciousness so what He was imparting wasn’t miracles , wasn’t even the complete covering for sin . What He was ministering was uncovering any of this sham existence by being filled with grace and truth .At times gently , at times ferociously . And they trusted Him to do it because He had authority .And was ofcourse under authority . Real life and Real Kingdom are the same thing . One thing . And we join each other inside it . But it is absolute Light and not all of Jerusalem were up for it . So here we are and this is the “ king David’s new cart “ of automated fellowship where we “ like “ something . The truth of Light though is we are either drawn to it in one another or repelled by it . And similarly if there’s any Dark we are repelling one another if in that matter we are already in Light . A lot of this is unspoken . It’s inside attitudes behind the things we are writing about . Many times we can’t quite articulate it either . Or it’s like Paul writes “ if I am an eye and because you are a hand , I say I have no need of you .....” so there's some of that too . We are all at different stages and that’s not a problem ..... honestly not .... It’s when a solo person thinks that after being given a gift of healing in 1 Corinthians 12 that they are now John Doe ministries Or That because they have read as far as Romans 5 that being able to minister to 15-35 year olds is the same as Kingdom . Praise and worship 25 minutes . Preach on the covering of the Blood 30 minutes . Get a word of knowledge to heal somebody - a few minutes then everyone’s buzzing and send them home . OK . But none of that’s Kingdom . It’s somewhere in the first two weeks of the gospels except they at least ministered in twos , so it isn’t even that . It gets 15-35 year olds excited ..... for many weeks and months any way ..... Until a church split over real world , real living type stuff .2
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| Dave Bilbrough, one of many on the podium of the London House church gatherings |
Why do we go out in twos? So we can now have a tandem pair of Genesis 3 conscious people ministering out of their leftbrain of library facts ? No that would be like taking two mono loud speakers and saying “ hey listen to this . It’s stereo !” It isn’t though . It’s simply two mono speakers . It’s the same sound information reinforced through two mono speakers . THE REASON WE GO OUT IN TWOS AND MORE IS TO BEGIN DEMONSTRATING THE EPHESIANS 1.10 ADMINISTRATION . This is Kingdom . Gerald Coates , Maurice Smith , Dave Bilbrough, John MacLaughlin, David Mansell ( to start ) even the Galloping Gourmet !!! Yup Graham Kerr was there !!!! John Noble ofcourse . Instinctually they were doing Kingdom . But each one were still right inside the old Genesis 3 consciousness still , but with some anointing !!!! By by the lights of 1970s it was brilliant . And it was nascent Kingdom . We aren’t preaching” lone - I Genesis 3” power Christianity . We are not preaching mono loudspeaker Christianity . The whole “ sonic “ information of Kingdom is stereo from the very first sentence . It’s redeemed community . But ofcourse how redeemed we are shows up in LIGHT . If we are still a load of Alan Bennett mono “ Talking Heads “ ( his plays that are monologues ) Just putting us in a room will still be a load of mono speakers . To be baptised in the sea and under the cloud as a people , as a City compacted together , is something God has to work . If we work it , then it’s socialism . It’s redistribution of wealth . Which is just a con , because the elite share out our hard earned goods with a bunch of ne’er do Wells and cream off the top load for themselves .... or sell off all the hardware of a country .... its power its water its railways its health and all these get run as corporations and the expenses skyrocket . That’s why the actual production of any nation devolves mostly back into 70% of self employed and small businesses. Because pyramids don’t work . Endless tiers of middle managers benefit a few at the top but they are the most inefficient way of running anything . The Body . The Kingdom . Our own bodies . Do not resemble Eiffel Towers . Or pyramids . We are a whole . With no middle management . The Body is joined by that which each individual joint supplies . That’s the Ephesians 1.10 Kingdom . In Darkness you have to have pyramids . Darkness churches are run by one human down through tiers . Kingdom Churches are run by the Holy Spirit through living connection and many classes or types of gifting distributed throughout the Body . The one who has real authority is just doing a whole load more “ supplying and joining “.
3
Fisherfolk Yeldhall Manor
Wherever they were at the London house church leaders ministered out of the rediscovery of baptism in the Spirit in a no religious setting and RELATIONSHIP .
Wherever they were at Graham Pulkingham and the Fisherfolk ministered baptism in the Spirit out of Graham’s deeper Anglican history but out of Community lived relationship .
As we proved in Emsworth Community , the Body is itself an entity like our own bodies with its own homeostasis . There’s stuff coming up and in Christ we do have what it takes for things to be brought into complete deliverance .
We weren’t very good at it . We didn’t have Norman Grubbs articulation . But it really was going on , had we continued with it .
The alarming nature of “
The Hideous strength” that is serpent life quite put the leadership off , and some of the leadership got rid of the more mature leadership and called this all “ way too heavy and unnecessary “.
So what happens ? Things which had been more fluid and Kingdom revert back to pyramid , and “ one leaders family “.....
with only family members having a look in ...
until they too get cheesed off.
But no .... the gospel was clear .
Take up your cross and follow Me
Paul says Dont get bitter in the day of testing .
That’s not the same as allowing a pyramid leader to do and say what they like . That’s just Marxism .
But when your strongholds are being brought into the Light ..... be assured you won’t like it .
It’s not a deckchair on the Mediterranean . It is the Song of Solomon north wind . It is the astringents in Esther’s beautification .
Jacob said at Peniel “ Dont let me go until you have blessed me “.
Bind the festal sacrifice to the altar .
But boy this has to be right !!!! People who are Christ them will really be about pulling you through . The Spirit will be upon them for this purpose . They will be groaning with groans too deep for words and the Holy Spirit will be helping them in their weakness . And guess what ? Next week it will be their turn !!!!
Nobody is exempt . We are going from glory to glory .
Elders have just had more of this sequence . They’ve done more of this training in righteousness . But nobody can say “ I am without sin now “..... all we can say is we are getting better at believing Christ in me as me .
It’s not a doctrine , it’s a manifestation of greater and greater unity and love.
Of being inside each other in a holy and healthy way ..... not codependency , aiding and abetting each other’s Genesis 3 alone-I.
This is why we “ sniff the air “ like Paul .
Because we are spiritual beings we know this stuff anyway when we are amongst people .
Understand this ..... yup , some part is a geographical melding of each church in one location .... but it’s really a continuous state in the Spirit .
Having fallen in love , God does mean things like says ....Right you have to move on now !!!
So it says in Acts on the beach everybody was loving on Paul as he was leaving , with much tears and crying . They genuinely didn’t know if he would be killed .
But it’s this Romans 8 state that we are co pollinating round the world . To the extent we are inside it , to that extent we meet each other instantly inside it .
When we were firstlevellers , we met each other inside the glorious knowledge of being born again .
When we were baptised in the Spirit we met inside that too .
When we were having Romans 3 to 5 opened up we nolonger had to regale each other with the exciting things God had been using us to do . We now knew it was just a glorious grace covered being we’d been brought into .
But Romans 8 is the place where you know that you know that you know there is no independent self . Romans 7 has strung you up from the ceiling to prove it .
You now know something of being inside each other ..... at least relative to the current Rhema word that Christ is speaking and getting you both involved in .
Some people are preaching a Christianity , whatever that is . But Jesus preached Kingdom . The Kingdom of heaven is at hand .
3 1/2 years later there was a microcosm that got called ekklesia .
Can we really call anything on earth yet run like a pyramid the world over “ church “ or “ ekklesia “?
Does it even look like Acts 2?
I’ve never heard this spelt out by anybody but me , but isn’t Acts 2 just the Holy of Holies furniture ?
In the Holy of Holies there’s a prepared mercy seat . An acacia box covered inside and out with gold , stacked out with three forms of Word .
Testimonies of “ Life being lived “
The Rhema NOW Word
The Declaration of pulling the whole of heaven into our earth space . Or the almond stick declarations of Deliverance .
And above the Mercy Seat the manifestations of Gods Now glory , His Shekinah Presence .
So in Acts 2 we see this as all one package .
And that is our blueprint as ekklesia .
Well where is it ?
Anywhere ?
For brief instances God works revival like Jesus Word of knowledge about where the fish are . The fish are found and all the ministries are fighting each other over the nets and the biggest hauls .
Then we go back to Jesus in the gospels and see the same pattern and reproduction of Kingdom .
God has to start somewhere so He starts with His Chosen Son , who though solo , in His Heart are the highways to Zion . So unlike any other ministry anywhere Jesus brings 12 ordinary people into this co shared Holy of Holies reality by Acts 2.
Extraordinary . But I’ve never heard that spelled out by anybody ever .
Not even R Edward Miller who prayed in the Argentine Revival
Not even Jorge Pradas who established a church in every province of Argentina and some others in Europe and UK.
WHAT IS IT WE ARE ACTUALLY DOING ?4
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| Yeldall Manor where the Fisherfolk were based in UK, then Vic Gledhill based Life for the World Trust Drug Rehab here. |
Unless you are born of the Kingdom you cannot see the Kingdom . It’s just endless religious movements and stone buildings scattered across the nations . Cain church and Abel church . Understand the Anglican harvest festival is but a small meme of the entire thing but it sure does go a long way to capturing the whole of it. The idea of bringing in food that you have harvested out of your own farms , not as a sacrifice for sins exactly, they aren’t quite that mad ...... but it’s some kind of “ works thank offering “ for Gods abundant supply . It’s some tins “ on the side “ which will be farmed out to people who will be genuinely grateful , doubtless . But real Kingdom is real heart relationship with God and each other . It dismantles the whole of Genesis 3 separation from the inside of the heart out . We really do all go into the ground and die .... Not to OUR AUTHENTIC SELF..... To our whole Satanically driven spirit infestation that takes a Cross to deliver us in death and resurrection. Our authentic God conceived and God created self comes bouncing back bigger than ever !!! Norman Grubb calls it “ us - with a wink “. Because we know that at our inner centre we have died !!!! If this process doesn’t have Jesus label on it , it isn’t . It’s just that it’s a Holy Spirit label that can’t be seen except by born again eyes . When did I give to you a drink Jesus ? When that little one came in my name and asked for a drink . What is “ my name “? Spontaneously God driven . There is a beggar type who hasn’t the slightest intention of anything other than free food , and they claim that they are coming in Gods Name and asking you for free stuff . But just “ claiming “ and “ being something spontaneous “ in your own God given integrity are two different things . Back to the heart thing . All of us are naturally something . First thing I got used in was having loads of songs . These were a blessing to the Body . Then I got cheesed off . Know why ? I can articulate it now . I didnt want to be stuck for ever and a day with aiding and abetting the Genie Aladdin’s Lamp rubbing of praise . I wanted to get to the heart of what the apostles were actually doing . Vic Gledhill had a burden for all the drug addicts . He began Life for the World Trust and they moved into the Reading House that the Fisherfolk had lived in . During the height of multilevel marketing I met Vic again . By this time he was into motivational speaking in business . A kind of less well known Zig Ziglar . I asked him how he’d pulled away from his drug rehab work . “Only a small number ever get free “said Vic . “I got tired of wasting my life on losers . I feel I can make a greater contribution with those that want to change their mindset .” Want my perspective on that ? Perhaps you dont . My perspective is that is that Vic was a cross between a Matthew and a Mark . He likes things to be practical and actually work , but like Lance Walnau , he’s also a big perspective man , who likes setting things in motion . A builder . An entrepreneur . But if you never “ see “ how Jesus came not only to bless us with Deuteronomy 28 blessings , but to completely reverse the Genesis 3 lie ..... anything you practically try to do for people won’t get anywhere . That’s why we preach Kingdom . That’s why we preach seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness . Not just to be mean . Because it’s the only thing that works . Marxism doesn’t work . Actually neither left nor right politics works . Kingdomtics is the only thing that works , and contains every shade of genuine positivity within all of it .
Tuesday, 2 January 2018
Let's worship Fittingly
but it's cheating isnt it?
Don Moen and I live very comfortably in the West. i guess Don has suffered things and I was put out of one of the best churches on the planet in the 80s...,but we have cars, houses, centralheating, the Jesuits havent yet burst through the doors with machine guns....
What's next is not a grunge worship, where OK, 90s and noughties Christians were being honest about their need of God in a similar way to Graham Pulkingham crying on his crypt floor in Downtown Houston for three months....
I mean everything is valid....
But David was first generation.....he was a psalmist singing praises to God while shepherding, then chased round a wilderness within an inch or less of his life....
and in THAT CONTEXT writing about being taken above it all and seeing the heavenly perspective....
and yes writing about the whole thing....his first earthly feelings and then his revelations in counterpoint....
But they were his words.
Don Moen and I are just nicking them....but already they are better than the rather dubious first and secondlevel lyrics that others are writing today from out of the very same Genesis 3 Orphan experience that
a. was a delusion dreamt up by Satan and
b. we left the minute we got born again....
NO NO NO NO Saints.....If yiou really still cant come up with any good lyrics go back to the psalms and some of the real hymns of the last 400-500 years.
God is Great. He is worthy of more than your baby nappy lyrics which you are enforcing on the world church because you have the recording studios and access to conferences.
God is doing a great thing. He has already done a great thing. He lives in the Eternal Now. Just because you personally havent caught up yet, no, we the church of the Living God should not be subjected to your Darwin infested, Illuminati infested, TV infested, Hollywood infested, lyrics straight out of Babel.
We are now a Priesthood in Light
We have the sword of the Lord upon our lips
Once we have grown a bit in the Lord and quit all the shortcircuiting of His Life in us though fizzes sputs and sparks, we will increasingly experience in real time the awesome authority we yield in His Holy Presence...
Binding that which has already been bound in heaven and loosing that which has already been loosed in heaven.
And quite apart from which one plays any songs or instruments,
OUR ELDER BROTHER would quite like to sing among His brethren (read Hebrews)
And HE CAN WORSHIP.
So wake up people.
Every single minute that we can still worship together is far far too valuable for a lot of the crap that is expressed in lyrics and tunes at the moment.....
We are gathering in the the UNSULLIED NAME OF JESUS CHRIST
HE IS LORD OF LORDS AND KING OF KINGS.
I doubt if some of you would dare even to sing some of your dross in the presence of our earthly Queen over here in the UK.
Not being too hyped up about this , but singing in the presence of an unbroken line of Kings that dates back way over 1000 years , even that has a completely different feel to it than singing before some tinpot President that is only around 4 years and has been chosen by Rothschild, or Soros long beforehand....
But our Queen is nothing before God, and this is the Name we gather in each week. Stand to attention in your spirit and wake up people. Praise and worship has to be more thirdlevel than this from the inside out of our beings. God is so so so worthy.
Tuesday, 13 January 2015
The Birth of the new Church
Chris Welch
23 hrs · Edited ·
UK pastor/apostle - How're you right now doing church, Chris ?· Like
Chris Welch Failing on every level of your score sheet...just like Jesus at the cross
4 mins · Like
Chris Welch As I said...now is exactly like it was in 1973- 4 in Amersham when my Dad was asking me the same question.
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Rich Novek likes this.
Chris Welch Although it seems weird talking like this...anybody remember 1975 and 6? The Kansas City Shepherd's Conference, the Lakes and the Dales Bible Weeks...and the angels? And the reports of angels in the Yorkshire Press? I tell you I don't mind failing at all!!!! LOL
I was recalling 1973 and 4. Marcus Roberts had had a significant encounter with USA Christians from Gene Edwards' Galeta fellowship. I think he met some in Falmer University Brighton, then he exhuberantly shared some of Watchman Nee's material with us. I have shared the effect of Graham Pulkingham on Amersham Baptist Church in what was quite a wry encounter of two species.
Graham Pulkingham grabbed our attention because the Fisherfolk came almost direct from Houston to do a week at our school, Dr Challoner's Grammar School Amersham.
But also Graham's talk to the church really got our notice. It was the anointing with which he stated the Church is the Body of Christ. It had the same cutting edge that Jesus did when He stated to Nazareth Synagogue: " Today is this scripture fulfilled in your midst."
I have shared of the 1970s origins of the church Marcus and I eventually ended up in. Long before we arrived Jorge Pradas had challenged the charismatic prayer fellowship that met once a month in Emsworth: "Are you a fellowship or are you the Church?"
It's specificity of believing.
So yesterday I was recalling the same kind of lull that we are in now, but 40 years ago. Then it seemed things changed like a whirlwind two years later. The Dales Bible Week pinned some of us
to the wall. It was in a cow's shed in Harrogate Showground The irony wasn't lost on us as Ern Baxter led several thousand of us in the prayer of Mary....Lord I don't understand but be it unto me according to your Word.
Now we can articulate what we were doing.
It was specificity.
It was believing in our heart and confssing with our mouth that Jesus Christ, the same awesome Jesus Christ was being born in us. We were believing ON HIS LIFE.
In genesis 3 Adam believed OFF his life in a titanic act that still affects us.
He began believing in the lie of the independent self.
By being specific and nailing our colours...we are in fact reversing history,
History is being reversed on the fulcrum of the New Creation in Christ.
Therefore if any man is in Christ he is become a new creation, the old has passed away and the new has come. Our active believing on everything Christ did IS THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMES THE WORLD.
If we become passive, if we like Peter on the waves, start to consider for a moment what on earth am I doing? we will sink. This is not the victory.
THIS IS THE VICTORY even our faith. But we can pray, Lord help my unbelief.
Adam and Eve's little movement of reaching for fruit was VAST.
The Jesus Move taking their first corporate steps to nail their specificity to the mast was VAST.
And this is our believing.
STILL.
And now more defined through Norman Grubb after the book Yes I am.
I am Jesus Christ in his Chris Welch vinebranch form going on.
I don't build stone churches.
I don't seek to continue any tradition of man
I don't owe any man that task.
I am a free man in Christ.
But it IS the faith of Jesus Christ operating in me.
And now, as we have received the eyesalve of Revelation
we see God as the source of the ONLY LIFE in the Universe.
We can perceive a corporate derived life....since the devil
himself lives by God's life as well, but has twisted it in on itself
as a self for self life....so yes we see a derived life....
but now we keep our single eye open for what God is doing
with me, with everyone.
Willing and working for His good pleasure.
This is the New church.
Life itself.
We are not building oldstyle churches, oldstyle meetings.
We are telling you how you can live God's Life, the only real life
today in you. Sure we will gather as we eventually did in great numbers
40 years ago.....and when we gather it will be more specific than at any time since Adam. For now we are at last grasping what gathering in His Name means.
(Original Facebook post)
It took three whole generations for God to get His package of stuff into Abraham Isaac and Jacob and then this was rolled out into a "Family" Nation. But this in itself was still quite an outer form of what He was going for.
As I wrote this morning, on a huge scale, the Jews were used to bring in the Outer Court ministry. That God existed. That God wanted to bless and heal. That God was Father and wanted a relationship with a people. But it was Jesus whose job it was to introduce the next big stage. As we can see in history the last 2000 years has been a very mixed affair. Church has been incredibly like the Jews knowledge of God, with people more caught up with Law than relationship.
God is continually replanting and pruning His work. One way to think of Church history is as a "transition" between Law and Spirit. it began free , but even in Acts we can see seeds of religion wanting to take the church captive. The church itself has gone into the ground and died.....the first fruits of resurrection have happened with Luther's rediscovery of salvation by faith....and gradually more and more has been restored. Having done Holy Place Christianity for 100 years God is taking the whole of His church into the most radical transition yet. We enter individually into a crisis that is like Romans 7 crashing in on us. Everything that we knew, thought, felt we owned is going up in smoke in an experience of the altar of incense.
If you like the forerunners were the 12 apostles who had to learn they couldn't do Christianity. It's a horrible time for our flesh, but we start to get our new identity.
Now if we thought charismatic churches were an improvement on evangelical churches....well that's nothing to the difference between what's coming now.
I went through this type of transition 40 years ago in Amersham. We knew we had more light, but everywhere was just denominational churches. So we withdrew for a few years refusing to play the Christian game and sure enough the Spirit sent in amazing men , mainly from America, who raised up the last generation of churches.
These are now wearing thin, and the Spirit is currently brooding to bring forth something completely new. Probably like Jesus and the disciples, it won't even look like church...it'll be more like living together.
Saturday, 30 July 2011
Quarbyists and Brethrakers
Pictures taken from interior and exterior of Mayflower barn,built from the Pilgrims Mayflower ship timbers
The property was sold by the Quakers in 2006
The property was sold by the Quakers in 2006Quarbyists and Brethrakers
by Chris Welch on Thursday, 14 July 2011 at 14:35 on Facebook
Since God let the whole New Covenant seed fall into the ground and die a death, because it still contained dead religious works seed, then began again with Luther a raising up of a Church "come down out of heaven", we as a New Covenant people have been trekking along the by now familiar furniture of the Heavenly Sanctuary. The brazen altar of the one time Exchange of Life that took place in the Body of Jesus on the Cross.
The Laver of God's Word where we see mirrored our glorious new Indweller, Christ.
Then came the tricky bit. Forgotten by most for hundreds of years....
How do you do this bit again? Aaaah. You don't. The Holy Spirit does. You see there is no natural light in the next bit. It's the Holy Place. The one before the Holiest Place which is the final destination.
The Holy Place is only lit by the candlestick. Nuffink else.
And in here we have stayed , in different manifestations, for hundreds of years now.
The early discoveries of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit were made in the Quaker movement. 
Hence the quaking and the shaking.....initially through godly terror coming on those saving themselves from much of what was around at the period: Free- for- all fornication, drunkenness, gambling...
Shortly after came the Darby movement of Brethren. Their enlightenment about the Word is very like today's Fred Pruitt or Andre Rabe or Francois DuToit. They were an incredible missionary movement, who firmly believed now we have the Word in all its fulness....and my....in their skilful expositions , was it ever full?, that we had absolutely no need whatsoever for the supernatural and the manifestations of the Spirit. We are mature now.
If you took Ole's Pillar of fire and Cloud exposition to extremes that's what you'd end up with. You can read it on my blog.
The reason I've squashed up the two main exponents of this area of God's tabernacle into one weird mish mash in the title is this.
For next to 2 centuries we haven't advanced in real terms at all in the Body of Christ. Because nothing new has been uncovered. The Quakers and the Brethren are both joined at the hip in this respect too.
Both movements uncovered the true structure of the Kingdom of God. i.e. Pretty well none!!!!
In the Holy Place we really are functioning not just as Luther said in theory, here everyone really was behaving as a Kingdom of priests.Anybody could have a "hatha". King James says each one hatha gift (1 Corinthians 12)
Brethren and Quakers were NO END of trouble for salaried hirelings of the Kingdom in all the previous sects. Their way of operating was utterly offensive and threatening. What if all Christians behaved in this way. I wouldn't get my salary, then I'd have to go out and work for a living?!!!?
The pentecostal movement of the 20th Century insisted on an experience with the Holy Spirit, but this was just a stronger echo of the Continental Pietist movement. The charismatic movement of the 1960s was a kind of "catchup" rerun of earlier movements to collar more of those in denominations, and quicken them to some spiritual realities.
BUT ESSENTIALLY NOTHING WAS NEW . It IS ALL THE SAME RERUN OF HOLY PLACE revelation.
The twin revelations of the Holy Place are these. And they are both sides of the coin .
Darby = the 12 pieces of shewbread as revealed in the Light of the Holy Spirit's candlesticks, the enlightened Word.
Quakers were more forcibly contemplative and proactively waiting on the Living Holy Spirit to "move " a person to express a gift of the Spirit. This definitely errs more to the candlestick of the Holy Spirit directly.
And do you know something? If you attend an Andre Rabe event, or a Francois event, or invite Fred Pruitt round, this is largely what you'll get....a Holy Place format, almost Brethren dish, served up with piping hot Christ to nourish you and propel you onwards. Much the same as the Brethren.
So what changed?
This is personal opinion. Others may want to add to this.
I would say nothing in Christendom really changed in terms of the corporate until two men did something slightly different. One man, face down in an Episcopal crypt for months on end. The other a retired missionary of WEC.
First the crypt
Graham Pulkingham was totally totally broken at his own powerlessness as an Episcopal Minister surrounded by a broken area of downtown Houston. Like the priests in Joel 2, his brokenness led him to crisis encounter...I believe in his person, he experienced the death and resurrection of Christ in real terms, the way a lot of us on Facebook now have. In that openness of spirit he found his way to David Wilkerson's office and the rest as they say is history....EXCEPT FOR THIS DETAIL....
What raised itself around Graham was unlike David Wilkerson, who remained a rather singular character to the end of his prophetic days.....
No, around Graham was something i dont really think we've seen much. Perhaps a bit with Mel Tari in the Indonesian Revival. This was a supernatural body of people packed with Holy Spirit anointing moving and living together, not just giving gifts to each other in meetings like Darby and Quakers...
No, this was getting to be an early glimpse of the sort of Body Act2 was. They didn't go to meetings. They were all an individual meeting with the Living Saviour, who when they reassembled were a collective powerhouse of God which couldnt help but hoover people into the Kingdom around them. And when they left the States, one of the first places they hoovered was our school and neighbourhood! That's why I have the Vision of the Church in my very insides to dragoon you with. I was a hoovered one....so to speak. In that moment I saw the Kingdom and I have operated in that Melchizedek Kingdom ever since, although most of those around me have stayed put in their previous incarnations thinking that because God once blessed, they too are still following the Melchizedek order. Phooey. It's moved on!
This way of ministering blows out of the water Morris Cerullo, Rheinhard Bonnke,David Hathaway....you name your favorite Power preacher....Oh Fred doesn't have one, I forgot....
Acts 2 clearly states that Peter standing with the eleven, began to speak.....
THIS IS A DIFFERENT ORDER OF MINISTRY BECAUSE YOU ALL HAVE TO BE ONE AND YOU ALL HAVE TO CARRY THE ANOINTING. Which today is tough on 2 counts. We're not single eyed enough to be in the Unity of the Faith and secondly very few carry an active anointing....you know, the one that does the supernatural!!
Secondly - The Retired missionary
His name ofcourse Norman Grubb.
Before this, who honestly knew about "separation".
Separation is the terrible terrible deadly virus that bit us in genesis 3. The lie that there is such a thing as a God out there, as distinct from the very life I am living now. "If you would be like God..." said the devil...you do this.
Well firstly we could never be like God, because all we ever were was particular branch manifestations of VINE life, how else are we going to have power to exist? There is only one self-existent one in the universe. There is indeed ONLY ONE life in the universe. Everything else, though used for its own ends, is but a derivation of that ONE PURE LIFE IN GOD.Secondly we don't gain God if we could by works, and we can't cos we're already connected...
This mystery you will have to read more about in Norman Grubb's final book Yes I Am.See my blog.I have no room here.
So what do these 2 advances mean?
What do these advances MEAN? You're kidding me! This plus the discoveries of David Swan and Ed Miller who are seeing all this from the heavenly angle are nothing less than the Corporate Entry into the HOLIEST PLACE. Because Norman Grubb wasnt ever baptised in the Spirit he never really saw church other than what it was in his lifetime, a disparate group of 3rdlevellers going around the odd group here and there all over the world, raisng up mature individuals in Christ. He had no concept of what the charismatic movement had really been preparing the world for.
A corporate empowered Body with a 3rd level vision encapsulated in my last blogpost The Lord's Prayer as Template : The Apocalypse and the Unveiling of Christ.
You see, though Graham Pulkingham could share about his experience of the death and resurrection of Christ in his being....he was too early to have twinned with Norman Grubb on all the theory. And John Wimber could have been the man in the eighties, but none of their groups would allow Nancy Gilmore to share, so John remained backward as well. Listen folks, i'm all for honoring God's servants, because John Wimber did take things a stage further from Graham Pulkingham, but , like the Bible, when it comes to my own life in particualr and now anybody elses I call a spade a spade. It's the quickest way. And John Wimber's crowd were just too arrogant and not desperate enough to listen to Nancy Gilmore . Who knows? Thirty years ago, had they done so, would any of us be bothering to write all this down now?
Possibly a third major new thing?
Perhaps there is something else too. Christian media notwithstanding. In 1976, with the new found vision of an empowered Body of Christ, fed by newly rediscovered supernatural ministries of Apostle and prophet a man called Ern Baxter in the Dales Bible Week did something different. He called everyone into their local tribes . Because we are geographical ambassadors for the King. We each have a patch!!!! And as local churches in an area, we are meant to have spiritual rulership...because right now in the heavenlies we DO! And to my knowledge the first ever serious bit of Ephesians 6 corporate warfare was carried out in the Spirit, and by Spirit direction.
This pattern was developed further in the 90s through the ministry of Peter Wagner and was mainly directed at all the inhospitable regions of the 10/40 window. God appeared to many in those areas sovereignly, without human intervention. He also raised up Rory and Wendy in particular to set up sattellite TV in a more global way than ever before. Now though I've explained the third level with them for an hour 6 months before they even knew about being called to raise up God TV, at present they are sticking firmly to first and secondlevel revelation of Christianity. What I have mentioned above.Christianity that takes us up to around 1800 or 1900. In other words, even with Rick Joyner involved, way, way, past its sell by date.
As Andre Ousterhuizen, Francois DuToit and many others will say...."Why bother with a christianiity that doesn't go beyond the veil? Does nobody know the veil was ripped from top to bottom. We can all go in now?" Yes saints. But not just as an individual expression. There is a whole corporate expression of the same truth!
- Paul Nobleas I know something of the Brethren I will chip in here! They did experience the gifts of the Holy Spirit including healing at the beginning but closed them down because they thought it was drawing attention to themselves. They believed and... practiced the priesthood of all believers and waiting on the Holy Spirit but rapidly split as prominent teachers became the focus and the same old pyramids grew up I of Paul I of Derby Etc.See more14 July at 16:13 · · 1 personRichard Epps likes this.
- Chris Welch Dear Rich...and Linda..I think you've got some of the gist of what you have to "do"...that is very little...i think you've been going along the path He wanted you to. Rather than take away anything, any Word that I m bringing is in the spirit of the 2 Peter 1:5 list and "to your faith add..."but this list wont help much because it is another individual list which for 20 Centuries the church has been really good at.14 July at 21:10 ·
- Chris WelchThere are two ways God is building His House, 3 if you include the St Paul method. There's the Quarry method, as in Solomon's Temple, where all the work is done off site. And there is the Ezekiel bones method of "bones rattling as they join... together." This is the disciples and Jesus, and the disciples and Acts 2 method, and this across the whole earth is also the natural family norm. St Paul was a hybrid, being all but a murderer of Christians his name didnt come up onthe short list for church membership to most Judean churches anyway. So (probably lucky for us) He had some one to one time with the best teacher of all, Jesus. Then he filled out his revelation with some church life. Mine was in reverse.See more14 July at 21:16 · · 2 peopleLoading...
- Chris WelchIt's OK getting stuff individually as most of our generation have had to do, but as a method for dispersing seed it really sucks. In tuning terms it's a bit like stopping at middle C (the first note) and trying to convince someone that you'...ve tuned the whole piano.Next comes the octave. This is the blueprint church, which like the disciples in terms of churchlife, took 3 years. Then when the central octave is done you wait for the parthians and all the others to visit Jerusalem for a Feast, and you inundate the lot of them in a drunken massive hit of worship, glory and Presence, and then let the "central octave" try to explain that one away without collapsing John Crowder style on the floor
Saturday, 22 January 2011
Specificity and Waggling your arms and hands like Jorge Pradas by Chris Welch
Facebook note on Saturday, 22 January 2011 at 22:53
Following on from Coming into God's House
Well that's a weird header title!
Let's deal with waggling first of all. On a handful of occasions, and there is one I'm calling to mind, Jorge Pradas who was used to lay apostolic Word in Emsworth, got us all waggling our arms and shaking our hands. This will confirm everything this current move think about the predecessor move of the 80s! But no, what he was getting us to do in the Spirit was shake free from all our preconceptions about
what we thought church life was
what the Christian life was
what our own lives were
and allow the Holy Spirit to invade.....to make what was nebulous, fluffy and ultimately just empty religion....specific and defined.
Around 10 years earlier Jorge was staying with his friend and former Brethren pastor Ian McCulloch in Emsworth. He was on holiday. But naturally he got invited to a monthly or weekly charismatic prayer meeting some of them held on Sunday nights. These were people from different churches. So there was Jorge minding his own business, but suddenly kicked to alert in the Presence of God that was evident there.
If God has birthed a ministry in you....it's part of you. There is no holiday. So like a bolt from the blue, this Word came out of heaven through Jorge . "What do you call yourselves?"
"A fellowship."
"What's a fellowship?"
People assumed it was a Catalan/Argentine translation problem probably.
So he repeated. "What's a fellowship? You can have fellowship. Show me in the Bible the word fellowship."
This stunned the charismatics, who were there for mutual encouragement and where they could freely use the gifts of the Spirit.
The Bible only recognises the Church. Are you the Church or aren't you?
That night then, Emsworth Church was born on that word. The church began and fundamental from the outset was that the members believed this was the Church.
Watchman Nee writes....you can have as many local churches as you like, meeting wherever geographically, but they must all be conscious that they are THE CHURCH and that they ARE ALL ONE THING.
Explaining that to the other churches in Emsworth seemed too difficult, so 15 years or so later they reverted to New Life Christian Church, Emsworth.Maybe something was lost in the process. Maybe this was an Ishmael/Isaac battle that was lost here. I am not there, so cannot comment.
I am in Portsdown Community Church. Peter Stott seems clear on the specificity of the church being the Church that happens to meet in the Meridian Centre...but whether it's always the same for all members I don't know.
"Community Church" is the style used in the days of Pyramid Apostle Networking. Their apostle was Tony Morton of Southampton. Community gets over "Redeemed Community". Well you hope it does.
But in all this hand and arm waggling, we have to be shaking ourselves from another of Man's orthodoxies.
Each individual perhaps thinks of himself/herself as two peas in a personal pod. The Old man/New Man rattling around inside. Old Chris new Chris in permanent Romans 7 struggle for identity. There's no personal specificity in the Spirit.
This is the "extracurricular" activity that the Holy Spirit has been cooking in the last 20 years. If we're not even clear what our church is....what are we believing about ourselves?
The Bible is very clear about the work of the Cross. It's not about to be complete. It's not being worked on. Jesus was quite categoric. "It IS FINISHED"
I have died with Christ. It is now nolonger I that live, but Christ who lives within me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.
It is on this base that I stand individually. I am now Christ in my form. This is a faith stand. It is spiritually defined. It has absolute specificity. And put another group of like believing believers alongside me, and boldly we declare we are the redeemed community, the Church of the Living God.
Waggle your arms again and your hands.....shake off all the old preconceptions. The concept that we are some kind of humanist vehicle for activities such as praise, prayer,preaching and coffee at the top of the Meridian Centre in Havant.
An activity centre that meets 10.30 every Sunday and does more prayer activity at sundry other occasions, and runs a 2ndhand furniture shop to provide for a debt relief advice charity. All these are things. What's the Spirit reality?
Well there is a believing, and there is a Spirit reality, because people comment on it when they come. There are processes happening in peoples lives that Paul would saymatches his phrase: I came that I might find Christ crucified among you.
But I believe the gifts to the church all over the world are tightening up in their specificity. Faith only operates around specificity. In Genesis chapter 1 God never said, Let there be something kind of , I dunno.....like Light I suppose." It was targeted and entirely specific. It's also tougher humanly being specific isn't it?
Abraham knew that confronting 2 kings. He said Sarai was his half sister...actually she was....hummmm....but she was HIS WIFE....and that gets to be pretty relevant if you know someone is after sleeping with her. And not only that but the God of heaven's entire calling on your life is to bring forth a son of Promise through PRECISELY her.
I don't know what's tougher, Abraham being specific about his God Promise/wife relationship or Peter being specific about the exact relationship with
THE RABBI that has placed a specific CALL on your life, that you've been with three gob-opening years, while you watched and personally participated in some stunning miraculous events. And then....no half measures here....complete with cursing....Peter says at Jesus trial "I %^$£*&.. ing never met the guy Jesus in my life!"
My burden here goes beyond this to a specificity in the Spirit. What we're into, to be fully Christian, has to tie in with the heavenlies. In bringing the KINGDOM of GOD to earth. Daniel Yordy and Francois will tell you the KINGDOM is here already. That it's the knowledge of the Glory of God that has yet to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.
Well some would say Thy Kingdom Come - the prayer....was fulfilled at Pentecost. The Kingdom did come.In Power.
But we are still praying Thy Kingdom Come, in an ultimate restoration of order type sense. This is the sense of the blog series I did on Psalm 24.
What I am steering things to is the prophetic.
This morning I was describing to Allen Mills the acceleration that took place as soon as the disciples received by faith the specific Word and calling that Jesus, operating in the Father brought to them, to make them Fishers of Men, if they
Folowed Him
Now.
We know from Elisha's call through Elijah. you don't mess around when God speaks. You obey. Now.And if you don't, like in the fifth chapter of Song of Solomon....
it's already too late. Jesus has gone.Moved on.
Part of the 1st commandment walk of loving God with all our being is priority. You don't put Him second to anything.And unlike human love for a person making a similar demand, you have the knowledge that God can undergird His call with His Provision.
Half the messes (humanly speaking) that we get ourselves into is that we are obeying a Word before we know for sure where our support will come from. Banks think we are nuts. Other Christians think we are nuts. The rest of our families can think we are nuts. But a call is a call. And the anointing is in that call, and hidden in it too, somewhere in the background sometimes is the provision for the call.
How many ministries have been launched on the back of Peter's walking on Water incident. As an event, it is probably more important historically as a Spirit teaching, than it is for the absolutely earth shattering event that it was. A human walks on water!
So hopefully you caught that. Things only accelerate when a Word comes, but in that Word is also the Power to get it achieved.
1.Churches don't have specificity.
2.Churches chunter along virtually as clubs, without any invasive Word.There has to be a sense of the invasion of the Kingdom into our "norm"
3. The heavenly Pattern
For this one you probably need to shake those arms and hands again, if only to please Jorge, who is now with Jesus thinking....at last....somebody was listening!
The last couple of notes on Facebook refer to the Tabernacle. Nancy Gilmore expressed that knowing the reality of Christ as her, she finds it alien to be thinking about the Tabernacle. I wrote to say the heavenly Tabernacle is the reality. The heavenly reality of this and the 3 Feasts are just how things work. And it is our lack of spiritual eyesalve in these realms that have made our "revivals" so bloomin random.
We are spending all our time building our own earthly conceptions of what revival , and church , and evangelism are.
-So people are all but stillborn
-making up churches that are human clubs
-praying for human concepts of what a revival might be......probably more of the same.
So here in brief is what should really be happening.
People are accelerated into the very Life of God only through the Word, the Living Word...however it comes to them.
This is as true of believers as it is of the living organisms that are the local versions of the Bride, called "ecclesia....called out ones....the Church"
A believer joins the people of God as an individual at the New Covenant equivalent of the brazen altar, the Cross.
They now have a new RESIDENT in their spirit, and fused AS ONE to their spirit; His Name is Jesus. Because Jesus lives there, when they come next to the Laver, they look in its shiny mirror surface and see Jesus.
So the Laver is the washing of water in the Word.... a process that ever continues.The Bible is nolonger a lawbook,but a mirror of the Lawkeeper inside us.
The Laver is baptism in water, which is us saying to God in the Spirit....yes I sign my signature on the dotted line of the New Covenant
This laver experience was something else for Jesus, and can be for us too. Jesus came out of his water baptism, with the Spirit descending on Him like a dove. He was baptised in the Holy Spirit.
We become priests by the Spirit of the Lord. We can enter now into the Holy Place.
Another baptism that is simultaneous to this , which prepares us to function in the Holy Place, is that we are baptised into the corporate Body of Christ. Like Ruth entering as an alien Canaanite into the people of God we say with her, "Your people are my people, your God my God."
Because none of the rest has been true in the lives of other church people, the Body of Christ remains only a somewhat pious concept, having a rather heavy religious atmosphere to it. But not so among those who share these foundations in the Spirit.
The Holy Place or the 2nd Feast experience of Pentecost is meant to be glorious. In the previous post I have described some of the negative aspects which we see manifesting in the disciples' lives in the gospels. This is particularly relevant in our day, because in the Church worldwide we have now thousands of overgrown teenagers who manifest many of the features of "Fatherhood" in the Spirit, but their own innards are so undeveloped, because only a handful of people have known there is a third stage of growth, or third feast experience.
When all functions in the order of the Spirit the "spiritual teenage" or "young men stage" is a glorious affair just as it is in the natural. Get a bunch of teenagers on fire for God even in the natural, and they have a glory all their own....just as newborn babies do. The Holy Place experience in a Living wing of the Body of Christ , the young men stage, IS NOT aligned with an agegroup such as teenage, IT IS a Stage of growth in the Spirit. My hunch is that were we in a culture that just loved Jesus properly from cradle to grave, our stages in the Spirit would be a lot more aligned with the natural growth stages. As it is churches are strewn with 70 years olds still in nappies, being bottle-fed....almost still born actually.
The last Facebook note covered the acceleration in the Holy place. Immature people have their bread cut up neatly for them according to their tribe. On the table of the shewbread in there are 12 loaves all positioned round the table for the 12 tribes.I mentioned that I am not speaking theoretically. I obeyed God's inner call to me to leave University after the first year only and found myself in an early prototype of a functioning Holy Place Community. (click for pics and more history)They didnt know about the 3rd level.They didnt know all the foundations listed above. But we weren't a community by committee either. Stuff was coming to the surface of people's lives as the Holy Spirit would engineer, and the Body would be covering these members and ministering victory and encouragement. In the worst instances of double leukaemia of a son and later his father, this also was dealt with in prayer. It was the first time such cases had survived anywhere in the world, by giving each other their bone marrow. It was all over the television news. This was our experience in Emsworth.
The foundation that we can now add, is a lot more detail as to how the 2ndlevel works, how it is a time of "reckoning" by faith according to Romans 6 and 7. There is an experience of the Altar of Incense, as we, in a manner very similar to old photography are placed into "FIXER".....remember that anyone? The third level is the fruit of this fixing process.
We know we are Christ in our form. We don't "need" meetings to prove this to us. We go into meetings to take them over for Christ. We are now walkers who practice the verse "Just as you received Christ as Lord, so now, walk in Him."
Anyone who has been with men such as Rheinhard Bonnke,Morris Cerullo, Andy Elmes (local to us) knows there is a Fire anointing that compels others to come to Christ. I have written about evangelists' frustration that so few seem to operate with this zeal to reach more for Christ. There's a truth in this. And there is a Holy Spirit fire which so few have. It is what propelled me into being a catalyst for revival in part of our school when I was 13. But as I have said above there is another very serious point to make.
Morris Cerullo and Rheinhard Bonnke minister unfailingly on the "outward means of growth". They so well know how to minister in the Old Covenant Law of doing Christian things to somehow grow in God. As true fatherhood 3rd level ministries we ARE NOT CALLED TO DO THIS. We impart the New Covenant by the Spirit. We continually impart the foundations above. God's children become young men (understand this is both sexes) who in turn become fatherhood ministries. People who are obviously utterly saved have a testimony to share, they are that Testimony, who is ofcourse Jesus established in us. The thought that this won't have impact is unthinkable. A thirdleveller immediately gets noticed.
In fact in times past, when there were so few, if they wrote books, they'd automatically be high on the Christian bookshelves. Corrie Ten Boom,Oswald Chambers,Spurgeon,John Wesley,Madame Guyon,Dietrich Bonhoeffer,Watchman Nee,Mother TheresaJohn Wimber,Mother Basilea Schlink....the list goes on and on.
I want to temper comments about generals like Morris Cerullo,Benny Hinn and Rheinhard Bonnke with respect for all the ways in which the Holy Spirit has used them to bring a harvest. This has to be weighed in the Spirit with the thousands of believers that are running as fast in the opposite direction from such men. You see apart from individual growth in Christ there is another aspect to the 3rd level Body that was pioneered by John Wimber, and particularly later in 2008 in Lakeland.
If saints have proper Spirit foundations they are catapulted forward in growth. But more than this the BODY BUILDS ITSELF IN LOVE, at apace that is frankly FRIGHTENING. If you could really understand and appreciate what is happening on Facebook and blogs internationally, you would be stunned. But no man has the overview. And that's the point.Morris Cerullo's phrase was always "This is not the Work of a man, but the Holy Spirit." (And by the way, this is an example of specificity in the Spirit."
The problem with Morris - even though he does invite in 12-15 other extremely anointed platform ministries-
it's still Morris Cerullo Ministries.
The true 3rd level stuff is FACELESS.It's going on internationally non-stop around the clock. You can see from my 1989 message that I have been prophesying this but had no clue about Facebook. No man is in charge. Jesus is doing it.
So,we've covered 2 of the points.
People will nolonger be stillborn, but will grow right through to maturity.
The church will not be religious clubs, because they have living stones, and an unimaginable variety of matching wineskins. So much easier to reach people with churches of people that don't have dummies sticking out of their mouths.
But the last point is revival.
Ofcourse Morris,Benny and Rheinhard have to run round at HUUUUGE Kingdom expense like headless chickens. They are not preaching the right gospel. It's hugely incomplete. Nobody can grow. It's not new Covenant, apart from depositing an anointing of the Spirit on their heads, they then dose them up with tons of laws of what a Christian looks like.
BUT a Christian doesn't look like anything. He is Christ in THAT PERSON'S FORM! What's all this external stuff about then? it's the very opposite of what James spoke, that's what it is:
Acts 15:9 19 “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. "
The Feasts describe the revival cycles that we see at the very outset of the Church.Not only are we growing, individually and corporately , but as natural as waves on the sea, or birth contractions in childbirth, we learn to move with the Spirit's Harvest cycles over localities. The 3rd Feast , Tabernacles,has its own massive Feast of Ingathering built in.
Ingathering follows Trumpets and Atonement. This is typified in Joel with the priests flat on their faces.
Here's a 1960s picture:
Graham Pulkingham, brought to the end of himself on the crypt floor of the Church of the Redeemer Houston for 3 solid months. (His Day of Atonement)
This intercession birthed a whole community that brought thousands into the church, and ultimately affected my life as the whole group moved to England and ministered into places like our school after our revival.Graham was a 3rd leveller bringing forth a group of 2ndlevellers who surrounded him, who in turn would have gone off and done the same.
Are you getting the picture how we have totally missed it? Of how wrong Benny Hinn's,Rheinhard Bonnke's, and Morris Cerullo's pattern is, as we mature into a really Living version of the Body of Christ. We don't have to wander round like a corpse Zombie anymore. Havant doesn't need to have half of its members dosed up on medications in depression, and the rest sick as dogs, all staring at you with bleary eyes. (Slight exaggeration) But you get what I am saying. Enough of this half-gospel,half-church,half-Life. The heavenly Pattern is there for everyone to see. Quit fighting the Spirit, and just do things His way. I mean our way has sure worked well hasn't it? Just read God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
Following on from Coming into God's House
Well that's a weird header title!
Let's deal with waggling first of all. On a handful of occasions, and there is one I'm calling to mind, Jorge Pradas who was used to lay apostolic Word in Emsworth, got us all waggling our arms and shaking our hands. This will confirm everything this current move think about the predecessor move of the 80s! But no, what he was getting us to do in the Spirit was shake free from all our preconceptions about
what we thought church life was
what the Christian life was
what our own lives were
and allow the Holy Spirit to invade.....to make what was nebulous, fluffy and ultimately just empty religion....specific and defined.
Around 10 years earlier Jorge was staying with his friend and former Brethren pastor Ian McCulloch in Emsworth. He was on holiday. But naturally he got invited to a monthly or weekly charismatic prayer meeting some of them held on Sunday nights. These were people from different churches. So there was Jorge minding his own business, but suddenly kicked to alert in the Presence of God that was evident there.
If God has birthed a ministry in you....it's part of you. There is no holiday. So like a bolt from the blue, this Word came out of heaven through Jorge . "What do you call yourselves?"
"A fellowship."
"What's a fellowship?"
People assumed it was a Catalan/Argentine translation problem probably.
So he repeated. "What's a fellowship? You can have fellowship. Show me in the Bible the word fellowship."
This stunned the charismatics, who were there for mutual encouragement and where they could freely use the gifts of the Spirit.
The Bible only recognises the Church. Are you the Church or aren't you?
That night then, Emsworth Church was born on that word. The church began and fundamental from the outset was that the members believed this was the Church.
Watchman Nee writes....you can have as many local churches as you like, meeting wherever geographically, but they must all be conscious that they are THE CHURCH and that they ARE ALL ONE THING.
Explaining that to the other churches in Emsworth seemed too difficult, so 15 years or so later they reverted to New Life Christian Church, Emsworth.Maybe something was lost in the process. Maybe this was an Ishmael/Isaac battle that was lost here. I am not there, so cannot comment.
I am in Portsdown Community Church. Peter Stott seems clear on the specificity of the church being the Church that happens to meet in the Meridian Centre...but whether it's always the same for all members I don't know.
"Community Church" is the style used in the days of Pyramid Apostle Networking. Their apostle was Tony Morton of Southampton. Community gets over "Redeemed Community". Well you hope it does.
But in all this hand and arm waggling, we have to be shaking ourselves from another of Man's orthodoxies.
Each individual perhaps thinks of himself/herself as two peas in a personal pod. The Old man/New Man rattling around inside. Old Chris new Chris in permanent Romans 7 struggle for identity. There's no personal specificity in the Spirit.
This is the "extracurricular" activity that the Holy Spirit has been cooking in the last 20 years. If we're not even clear what our church is....what are we believing about ourselves?
The Bible is very clear about the work of the Cross. It's not about to be complete. It's not being worked on. Jesus was quite categoric. "It IS FINISHED"
I have died with Christ. It is now nolonger I that live, but Christ who lives within me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.
It is on this base that I stand individually. I am now Christ in my form. This is a faith stand. It is spiritually defined. It has absolute specificity. And put another group of like believing believers alongside me, and boldly we declare we are the redeemed community, the Church of the Living God.
Waggle your arms again and your hands.....shake off all the old preconceptions. The concept that we are some kind of humanist vehicle for activities such as praise, prayer,preaching and coffee at the top of the Meridian Centre in Havant.
An activity centre that meets 10.30 every Sunday and does more prayer activity at sundry other occasions, and runs a 2ndhand furniture shop to provide for a debt relief advice charity. All these are things. What's the Spirit reality?
Well there is a believing, and there is a Spirit reality, because people comment on it when they come. There are processes happening in peoples lives that Paul would saymatches his phrase: I came that I might find Christ crucified among you.
But I believe the gifts to the church all over the world are tightening up in their specificity. Faith only operates around specificity. In Genesis chapter 1 God never said, Let there be something kind of , I dunno.....like Light I suppose." It was targeted and entirely specific. It's also tougher humanly being specific isn't it?
Abraham knew that confronting 2 kings. He said Sarai was his half sister...actually she was....hummmm....but she was HIS WIFE....and that gets to be pretty relevant if you know someone is after sleeping with her. And not only that but the God of heaven's entire calling on your life is to bring forth a son of Promise through PRECISELY her.
I don't know what's tougher, Abraham being specific about his God Promise/wife relationship or Peter being specific about the exact relationship with
THE RABBI that has placed a specific CALL on your life, that you've been with three gob-opening years, while you watched and personally participated in some stunning miraculous events. And then....no half measures here....complete with cursing....Peter says at Jesus trial "I %^$£*&.. ing never met the guy Jesus in my life!"
My burden here goes beyond this to a specificity in the Spirit. What we're into, to be fully Christian, has to tie in with the heavenlies. In bringing the KINGDOM of GOD to earth. Daniel Yordy and Francois will tell you the KINGDOM is here already. That it's the knowledge of the Glory of God that has yet to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.
Well some would say Thy Kingdom Come - the prayer....was fulfilled at Pentecost. The Kingdom did come.In Power.
But we are still praying Thy Kingdom Come, in an ultimate restoration of order type sense. This is the sense of the blog series I did on Psalm 24.
What I am steering things to is the prophetic.
This morning I was describing to Allen Mills the acceleration that took place as soon as the disciples received by faith the specific Word and calling that Jesus, operating in the Father brought to them, to make them Fishers of Men, if they
Folowed Him
Now.
We know from Elisha's call through Elijah. you don't mess around when God speaks. You obey. Now.And if you don't, like in the fifth chapter of Song of Solomon....
it's already too late. Jesus has gone.Moved on.
Part of the 1st commandment walk of loving God with all our being is priority. You don't put Him second to anything.And unlike human love for a person making a similar demand, you have the knowledge that God can undergird His call with His Provision.
Half the messes (humanly speaking) that we get ourselves into is that we are obeying a Word before we know for sure where our support will come from. Banks think we are nuts. Other Christians think we are nuts. The rest of our families can think we are nuts. But a call is a call. And the anointing is in that call, and hidden in it too, somewhere in the background sometimes is the provision for the call.
How many ministries have been launched on the back of Peter's walking on Water incident. As an event, it is probably more important historically as a Spirit teaching, than it is for the absolutely earth shattering event that it was. A human walks on water!
So hopefully you caught that. Things only accelerate when a Word comes, but in that Word is also the Power to get it achieved.
1.Churches don't have specificity.
2.Churches chunter along virtually as clubs, without any invasive Word.There has to be a sense of the invasion of the Kingdom into our "norm"
3. The heavenly Pattern
For this one you probably need to shake those arms and hands again, if only to please Jorge, who is now with Jesus thinking....at last....somebody was listening!
The last couple of notes on Facebook refer to the Tabernacle. Nancy Gilmore expressed that knowing the reality of Christ as her, she finds it alien to be thinking about the Tabernacle. I wrote to say the heavenly Tabernacle is the reality. The heavenly reality of this and the 3 Feasts are just how things work. And it is our lack of spiritual eyesalve in these realms that have made our "revivals" so bloomin random.
We are spending all our time building our own earthly conceptions of what revival , and church , and evangelism are.
-So people are all but stillborn
-making up churches that are human clubs
-praying for human concepts of what a revival might be......probably more of the same.
So here in brief is what should really be happening.
People are accelerated into the very Life of God only through the Word, the Living Word...however it comes to them.
This is as true of believers as it is of the living organisms that are the local versions of the Bride, called "ecclesia....called out ones....the Church"
A believer joins the people of God as an individual at the New Covenant equivalent of the brazen altar, the Cross.
They now have a new RESIDENT in their spirit, and fused AS ONE to their spirit; His Name is Jesus. Because Jesus lives there, when they come next to the Laver, they look in its shiny mirror surface and see Jesus.
So the Laver is the washing of water in the Word.... a process that ever continues.The Bible is nolonger a lawbook,but a mirror of the Lawkeeper inside us.
The Laver is baptism in water, which is us saying to God in the Spirit....yes I sign my signature on the dotted line of the New Covenant
This laver experience was something else for Jesus, and can be for us too. Jesus came out of his water baptism, with the Spirit descending on Him like a dove. He was baptised in the Holy Spirit.
We become priests by the Spirit of the Lord. We can enter now into the Holy Place.
Another baptism that is simultaneous to this , which prepares us to function in the Holy Place, is that we are baptised into the corporate Body of Christ. Like Ruth entering as an alien Canaanite into the people of God we say with her, "Your people are my people, your God my God."
Because none of the rest has been true in the lives of other church people, the Body of Christ remains only a somewhat pious concept, having a rather heavy religious atmosphere to it. But not so among those who share these foundations in the Spirit.
The Holy Place or the 2nd Feast experience of Pentecost is meant to be glorious. In the previous post I have described some of the negative aspects which we see manifesting in the disciples' lives in the gospels. This is particularly relevant in our day, because in the Church worldwide we have now thousands of overgrown teenagers who manifest many of the features of "Fatherhood" in the Spirit, but their own innards are so undeveloped, because only a handful of people have known there is a third stage of growth, or third feast experience.
When all functions in the order of the Spirit the "spiritual teenage" or "young men stage" is a glorious affair just as it is in the natural. Get a bunch of teenagers on fire for God even in the natural, and they have a glory all their own....just as newborn babies do. The Holy Place experience in a Living wing of the Body of Christ , the young men stage, IS NOT aligned with an agegroup such as teenage, IT IS a Stage of growth in the Spirit. My hunch is that were we in a culture that just loved Jesus properly from cradle to grave, our stages in the Spirit would be a lot more aligned with the natural growth stages. As it is churches are strewn with 70 years olds still in nappies, being bottle-fed....almost still born actually.
The last Facebook note covered the acceleration in the Holy place. Immature people have their bread cut up neatly for them according to their tribe. On the table of the shewbread in there are 12 loaves all positioned round the table for the 12 tribes.I mentioned that I am not speaking theoretically. I obeyed God's inner call to me to leave University after the first year only and found myself in an early prototype of a functioning Holy Place Community. (click for pics and more history)They didnt know about the 3rd level.They didnt know all the foundations listed above. But we weren't a community by committee either. Stuff was coming to the surface of people's lives as the Holy Spirit would engineer, and the Body would be covering these members and ministering victory and encouragement. In the worst instances of double leukaemia of a son and later his father, this also was dealt with in prayer. It was the first time such cases had survived anywhere in the world, by giving each other their bone marrow. It was all over the television news. This was our experience in Emsworth.
The foundation that we can now add, is a lot more detail as to how the 2ndlevel works, how it is a time of "reckoning" by faith according to Romans 6 and 7. There is an experience of the Altar of Incense, as we, in a manner very similar to old photography are placed into "FIXER".....remember that anyone? The third level is the fruit of this fixing process.
We know we are Christ in our form. We don't "need" meetings to prove this to us. We go into meetings to take them over for Christ. We are now walkers who practice the verse "Just as you received Christ as Lord, so now, walk in Him."
Anyone who has been with men such as Rheinhard Bonnke,Morris Cerullo, Andy Elmes (local to us) knows there is a Fire anointing that compels others to come to Christ. I have written about evangelists' frustration that so few seem to operate with this zeal to reach more for Christ. There's a truth in this. And there is a Holy Spirit fire which so few have. It is what propelled me into being a catalyst for revival in part of our school when I was 13. But as I have said above there is another very serious point to make.
Morris Cerullo and Rheinhard Bonnke minister unfailingly on the "outward means of growth". They so well know how to minister in the Old Covenant Law of doing Christian things to somehow grow in God. As true fatherhood 3rd level ministries we ARE NOT CALLED TO DO THIS. We impart the New Covenant by the Spirit. We continually impart the foundations above. God's children become young men (understand this is both sexes) who in turn become fatherhood ministries. People who are obviously utterly saved have a testimony to share, they are that Testimony, who is ofcourse Jesus established in us. The thought that this won't have impact is unthinkable. A thirdleveller immediately gets noticed.
In fact in times past, when there were so few, if they wrote books, they'd automatically be high on the Christian bookshelves. Corrie Ten Boom,Oswald Chambers,Spurgeon,John Wesley,Madame Guyon,Dietrich Bonhoeffer,Watchman Nee,Mother TheresaJohn Wimber,Mother Basilea Schlink....the list goes on and on.
I want to temper comments about generals like Morris Cerullo,Benny Hinn and Rheinhard Bonnke with respect for all the ways in which the Holy Spirit has used them to bring a harvest. This has to be weighed in the Spirit with the thousands of believers that are running as fast in the opposite direction from such men. You see apart from individual growth in Christ there is another aspect to the 3rd level Body that was pioneered by John Wimber, and particularly later in 2008 in Lakeland.
If saints have proper Spirit foundations they are catapulted forward in growth. But more than this the BODY BUILDS ITSELF IN LOVE, at apace that is frankly FRIGHTENING. If you could really understand and appreciate what is happening on Facebook and blogs internationally, you would be stunned. But no man has the overview. And that's the point.Morris Cerullo's phrase was always "This is not the Work of a man, but the Holy Spirit." (And by the way, this is an example of specificity in the Spirit."
The problem with Morris - even though he does invite in 12-15 other extremely anointed platform ministries-
it's still Morris Cerullo Ministries.
The true 3rd level stuff is FACELESS.It's going on internationally non-stop around the clock. You can see from my 1989 message that I have been prophesying this but had no clue about Facebook. No man is in charge. Jesus is doing it.
So,we've covered 2 of the points.
People will nolonger be stillborn, but will grow right through to maturity.
The church will not be religious clubs, because they have living stones, and an unimaginable variety of matching wineskins. So much easier to reach people with churches of people that don't have dummies sticking out of their mouths.
But the last point is revival.
Ofcourse Morris,Benny and Rheinhard have to run round at HUUUUGE Kingdom expense like headless chickens. They are not preaching the right gospel. It's hugely incomplete. Nobody can grow. It's not new Covenant, apart from depositing an anointing of the Spirit on their heads, they then dose them up with tons of laws of what a Christian looks like.
BUT a Christian doesn't look like anything. He is Christ in THAT PERSON'S FORM! What's all this external stuff about then? it's the very opposite of what James spoke, that's what it is:
Acts 15:9 19 “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. "
The Feasts describe the revival cycles that we see at the very outset of the Church.Not only are we growing, individually and corporately , but as natural as waves on the sea, or birth contractions in childbirth, we learn to move with the Spirit's Harvest cycles over localities. The 3rd Feast , Tabernacles,has its own massive Feast of Ingathering built in.
Ingathering follows Trumpets and Atonement. This is typified in Joel with the priests flat on their faces.
Here's a 1960s picture:
Graham Pulkingham, brought to the end of himself on the crypt floor of the Church of the Redeemer Houston for 3 solid months. (His Day of Atonement)
This intercession birthed a whole community that brought thousands into the church, and ultimately affected my life as the whole group moved to England and ministered into places like our school after our revival.Graham was a 3rd leveller bringing forth a group of 2ndlevellers who surrounded him, who in turn would have gone off and done the same.
Are you getting the picture how we have totally missed it? Of how wrong Benny Hinn's,Rheinhard Bonnke's, and Morris Cerullo's pattern is, as we mature into a really Living version of the Body of Christ. We don't have to wander round like a corpse Zombie anymore. Havant doesn't need to have half of its members dosed up on medications in depression, and the rest sick as dogs, all staring at you with bleary eyes. (Slight exaggeration) But you get what I am saying. Enough of this half-gospel,half-church,half-Life. The heavenly Pattern is there for everyone to see. Quit fighting the Spirit, and just do things His way. I mean our way has sure worked well hasn't it? Just read God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
Saturday, 8 January 2011
So Amersham,it's1973,how about some Kingdom?
Graham Pulkingham behind the lady in white. Max Dyer Cello. Tim? far left. Martha Keys who wrote "Seeds of Peace" behind Graham slightly right. People laugh now, those that can remember "If I were a Butterfly," or "Let us give thanks thatour names are written." orTim's song "Behold how good and pleasant it is from ps 133"....and I get confused because I wrote a song for this psalm too about the same time. It wasn't the songs.....that's not the point. It was the effusion of the love and Presence of God that then was expressed in the whole life. Later they produced a book that was called "Celebrate the whole of it".
Bible house attempted to catch this kind of life here in Emsworth, but the inner reality that comes from "seeds falling into the Earth and dying, to be raised as fruiting plants"....only comes from the "reckoning stage" of Romans 6 and 7. Emsworth went a good deal alongthis roadhowever, and some of the late 70s early 80s meetings were extraordinary.
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It was Wednesday night in 1973 in the Christian Centre in Amersham on the hill outside London,just behind what is now a Talkback office which produces much TV watched here and Stateside. Graham Pulkingham had not long arrived with the Fisherfolk from Houston and been invited specially to speak. At 14 I was overawed.In the course of one year I'd seen Arthur Blessitt in Trafalgar Square where 20,000 had broken bread together courtesy of Hovis,Jean Darnall,Sergei Kourdakov fresh from a Russian Gulag....and now ,such a key figure in the charismatic renewal: Graham Pulkingham.We were Old Town Baptist Church and I could see him working very hard to choose his sentences. Its hard enough sharing what John's epistle calls Father level stuff with peers,but being asked to share what they were up to in language and concepts that us "children in the faith" (some as old as 70 were in that category,died in the wool country Baptists....spit through the grate types....in USA they'd be on a porch with a rifle) anyhow,that we would understand. This is what he had to face.
1.He was American.
This is a barrier. We Brits just couldn't and still many can't get why no small number of religious folk would want not to conform,up sticks and go to another country. Why is it important to have a conversion experience anyway? Freedom of worship? Now these pioneering people,having battled across wide open spaces and multiplied and established themselves, come back here where we've sat on our religious asses for centuries in Catholicism and Anglicanism, and the Americans ooze this largesse of expectation and general vision.Rather than come to any conclusion like perhaps Anglicanism isn't actually much of a Christian belief....we just assume it's something in the air mix in the States or something.
2 Well here, we were Baptists who at least preached regeneration and baptism, so as well as the basic diffidence to Yanks, this one of all things was an Anglican in all but name.Graham was Episcopalean.
3.He was darned intelligent.University trained.And yet a Pentecostal...how could that be?
4. Graham had been utterly broken by his own inabilities in the downtown Houston area.While bricks were often thrown through stained glass windows,for more or less 3 months he had sobbed in the crypt. Baptists don't do this kind of failure.I mean c'mon is this some kind of head case come to speak tonight? 1st and 2ndlevellers don't do brokenness on this scale.They have no concept of the depth of excavation by the Holy Spirit.So at best they wouldroll their eyes discreetly, thank God that this way they don't go, and muster up some attempt at giving the man a hearing.
6.If that wasn't bad enough Graham then says he has died with Christ and the life he now lives,he lives by the faith of the Son of God. That his life is now hidden/interleaved with Christ in God. The baptists didn't like where this was heading.Actually they didn't like where they had got to even,let alone where it was heading.
7 The seventh offense which stopped him being invited back was this. He said that we,us,were none other than the Body of Christ here on Earth. Many people demanded scriptures that Graham could support that. (He had a slightly furrowed brow here.Perhaps it was a more normal concept in Episcopalean Churches) Seems crazy to us now eh? Just 2-3 years later were the Lakes and Dales Bible weeks which were ALL about us being the BODY OF CHRIST on Earth.
8. But why do you all have to live together,asked one.Why community living? Again Graham was measured.That's possibly the wrong question.You see when the Holy Spirit fell ,we...er...fell in love with each other.We didn't want to be apart.
Sounds very selfish to me, all this love business.Sounds immoral. "Well,its not immoral, and we live within normal boundaries of respect one for the other,and each other's family units.Its just we love to love the Lord together."
9. Ahh yes.Meetings.I hope you have regular meetings?It sounds a rum do. "Well ofcourse we do have more formal meetings,"said Graham "and outsiders come too, or we travel to minister where people invite us. But a lot of the time,someone will pick up a guitar and sing and we'll join in. Others will share what Jesus has been speaking to them.Sometimes, if appropriate Ill share something."
"Errrm.It just seems too free and easy,like you've got no framework."
"Oh yes, we have a very firm framework indeed. It's our love and commitment to each other",said Graham.But already he knew what he'd known on entering the building....the futility of sharing the Kingdom with people who have no sense nor particular desire for Kingdom in their heart.
10."So you sing songs together then all of you?" "That's one of the things we do.And when we do many times we'll sense the Lord's Presence in incredible ways....so sometimes we may be silent before Him for an hour or more." "What? All of you? Why doesn't someone fill the time with something profitably? Say something.Study something?"
"At those times,when the Lord is present in that holy silence,it just is not appropriate."
"Oh Baptists are not like that!We'd never waste time like that." I could see Graham using all his wisdom to say nothing, though he was probably thinking something like...."No , I wasn't like that either before the Holy Spirit became real in my life".
11."Do you allow others to minister?"
"I am an ordained priest....but when anyone has something to share,sure they may share,and soon everyone's particular giftings are recognized by all"
"So you don't all take exams then?" The evening was getting tougher.One person's idea of the meaning of ministry was definitely not the other's. Graham said gently "A ministry is there to equip others so that all do ministry. It's the Body that is the ministry." Most of those asking questions had eyes that had glazed over completely. What a bizarre fellow this was? Baptists,even renewed Baptists knew their place in the world.They had regular meetings.Properly planned,set meetings with printed sermon agendas. They didn't live together. They didn't have any need to. Baptists had backbone,to face the world alone. Not for Baptists this soppy American sentimentalist tripe. We didn't mind stirring praise or a measured amount of quiet worship songs,even the odd gift of the Spirit at appropriate times with appropriate content, but the Pastor was the Pastor,and the elders and deacons were the elders and deacons, and that was how the Baptist Pyramid was, and listening to this man....well....episcopalean or no episcopalean, his ideas ,should they be tolerated,could break down all structure.So,no, Pulkingham must never be invited back.
Darin Hufford and Paul Anderson Walsh,Steve McVey and Frank Viola would have got on with Graham.
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Or was this only a glimpse into the future, a first fruit thing, which is actally the meaning of Pentecost. Reading between the lines of the gospel, we see a firstfruit thing among the disciples, who moved in power but , boy, all sorts of things were coming up in their lives. certainly those three years of training were incredibly intense and full-on, to get them to what would be "their Tabernacles" as forerunners, and everyone else's Feast of Pentecost see Acts 2 , the birth of the church. here is a later , very subdued glimpse of the community, followed by quite a negative report of the sorts of things happening behind the scenes.
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Part Two of How can you tell a 2nd level church ?- (and how, thankfully the Holy Spirit completely ignores the restrictions).
Completed -3.07am- Fri June 26th-Facebook note
In part one a foundation was laid describing how the Kingdom is about bringing the Heavenly Reality…that is the ways, attributes, functionings of heaven to earth. That there is now, and always has been a heavenly Tabernacle which was represented by an early prototype in Moses Tabernacle, then later by the Tabernacle of David, and later Solomon’s Temple.
The true Tabernacle and Temple
But Jesus said “I will tear down this temple (meaning His body now) and rebuild it in three days, signifying by what death He was going to die.”
Why , in this discussion is this important?
Because Jesus was going to do something no one had ever done before. Ever.
Outside of our time world, He had declared “Today, I have begotten you, It is written of me in the book, “I come to do your will O Lord.””
The Word that dwelt with the Father was not human, but God, present at the foundation of our known world. He was saying an Eternal “YUP”……
to becoming a containing vessel like us,
to becoming fully human
and to, (for the first time anywhere, ever,) bringing human flesh in its now glorified form
into the very Presence of the Father in the Holiest Place.
Never. Never. Never. Had anything like this ever happened.
Before this the Word had dwelt in the Presence of the Father….but never had a human.
So for the first time in heaven , now since the ascension, a human stands on the righthand of God the Father. And guess what? It gets better! He is interceding there for us. Why is that good? Just because He’s good at praying…so that us struggling little beings make it to the end of our lives without losing faith?
Nope.
His intercession is for us to catch the revelation on our insides that He has prepared a place for us. What, you mean rent-a home, on the outer reaches of heaven somewhere in the outer circle?
Nope. You’ve completely missed it.
He is not ashamed to call us brethren.
The place He has prepared for us fellow humans….. Fellow containers of God Himself is in this unheard of place that no one in their right mind in heaven would have even contemplated…
The very Holiest of Holies. This new place where human flesh can go and yet still live.
This is what is meant by
He has opened up for us by a new and Living Way……..
a place at the right hand of God
A place in the very heart of the Father
A place, in that sense that no angel can ever quite get near.
A redeemed place.
A place that Satan chose not for himself, in the midst of the full glories of heaven…yes by a very deliberate choice..
and we, in the face of appalling negatives, by faith, on earth, surrounded by very real opposites, have chosen…yes
God Himself.
Because we are containers of His glory…
God designed this picture of it:
A wooden (representing human flesh) Ark of the Covenant
covered on the inside and the outside with gold, representative of His Kingly glory.
Inside this Ark are the Two Tablets of the Ten Commandments.
This is Jesus life within us, in exactly the same way that Jesus on earth here , as a human, was a container for the Father’s life. He is the actual Law keeper within us.
So how does this affect us?
How does this affect us? Are you kidding? Nothing that we currently do can ever quite remain the same.
First some ground rules.
Did you notice how Nancy jumped in at the end of Part One and said this
"We have all three levels in us, when we have Christ in us"
and a few weeks ago when I was describing how it was now time for the Third level to be corporately manifested in the Church, she said "The mature Father level has always existed since the Church was born in Acts."
Do you remember me saying it is just as Ezekiel said...Wheels of prophetic outworking within wheels.
I describe this more in the Third Level audiomessage part 1 see picture link on my blog.
The arc , and probably the most important arc that Nancy is seeing began at the Cross, has always existed ever since and will culminate in ever increasing glory until the return of Jesus.
What I am declaring is quite specific and is no different , but perhaps stronger,with more clarity, than both Graham Pulkingham and later John Wimber. God's tide is no different than a gradually rising incoming sea tide. It comes in and goes out in individual waves, but the net effect increases until hightide is reached.I speak of the revelation of the Church, both local and corporate, which in the Spirit have little to differentiate them.
Something ,as I have stated repeatedly on my blog, of unique importance happened around 1906 as a man called Evan Roberts lay , conducting meetings, face down on a Welsh chapel floor. Yes, the return of the Holy Spirit supernatural form of Christianity returned in Wales,The Black Forest and Azusa St, but something even more incredible was happening. It was the birth of a Church actually beginning to function corporately, and not just as a man in a pulpit pulled strings. This was the Order of the Holy Spirit.The Order of heaven. A manifestation of the all but forgotten heavenly realm that Jesus Our High Priest moves in, the Melchizedek order of Hebrews chapter 7.
These sort of waves, only God knows about. Specific historic timings in God.
What Nancy is talking about is our foundation.
The Cross favours all or it favours no one
Jesus died to bring absolutely everyone back into a full and complete restoration to God the Father.
"The Fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in My Lord (the song from Colossians says)and we are complete in Him." We have everything pertaining to life and godliness in Christ NOW." We don't need to go up for it,that's to bring Christ down, we don't need to go into hell for it, that is to bring Christ back out of His sacrifice. As stupid as it may seem to our left-brains locked into what we can see hear touch and taste....our lives may not look like what we consider is Him....but if we just believe ON Jesus, on the very Power of His Life within us,He has promised to bring us ably to full maturity. It is not dependant on us willing and striving, it is dependant on the Power of His Life to get us there, from wherever we may be now.
Is that not rather cool?
As I stated in Part One, the order, the timing,the way,is entirely up to Him...providing we keep our hearts open to Him and don't as it says...harden our hearts, or allow any root of bitterness to rise up and take us clean out of His plans for us.This is why we encourage one another. Not just with friendly words...but because our words have spiritual power and strength as they come from the Holy Spirit.
As insane a thought as watching a cell divide and so develop into a complicated human Body....I mean the initial division doesn't look anything like it will look...so in the Spirit, our initial experiences may seem to be of absolute irrelevance to what we're aiming for. But that is just the nature of this present universe!!!!
The second ground rule
In every church, however dire,even the ones that have no idea about the gospel based on the finished work of Christ and not of works.....somewhere even there, is the stubborn "twinkler" in God who has somehow in this parched desert environment,reached full maturity in God...though he or she is blessed if she can tell why....they just...well....and tears fill their eyes at this point.....are in love with God...you see.
I know the Holy Spirit is a gentleman etc, and doesn't force Himself on anyone....yet I have noticed , because He only sees a full complete work of Christ at the Cross...He does tend to ignore the religious restrictions and mindsets of His people. Quite often He shocks those with little or no faith, byanswering their prayers and absolutely clearing someone's body of cancer. This is because when you are All powerful, and a full and complete annhihilation of all the Devil's works has been accomplished by the Son, Your co-worker at the Cross....it is terribly easy , by accidentally flicking your finger a bit too much, to 150% answer someone's prayer when they are only in faith for 10%. This is what is meant by He is well able to accomplish far above what we can even dream or think.
The power of the Word and faith over decades seems to have sufficient power to bring on even those who have spent their life kicking and screaming against loss of control, and baptism in the Holy Spirit, such that even they too reach an incredible maturity. It's just that the original plan for the Church was that this take 3, 4,5 years and not 70. If the disciples took only 3 years, what is possible in the Holy Spirit according to Jesus phrase "Greater things than these shall you see".
So the Holy Spirit is continually ignoring any first and secondlevellers plea for the quiet life, and rudely sends thirdlevellers in whose job it is, as it says in Isaiah, to stir the nest of the eagles, that they may be pushed out and forced to find their wings.
In general the Holy Spirit ignores all man made traditions and ideas of what Christians think Christianity is, to continually get believers to read of their position in Ephesians chapter 1 and 2, and in Colossians and Romans. He even gets the complete Bible to be read out in Anglican Churches. And gradually at least some start to get the hang of the radical stuff that Jesus has done for us.
The third ground rule
What is meant by a first, second or third level church?
Well according to the Tabernacle picture, a church that does not accept it's need for the shed blood of Jesus on the Cross to re establish and reconnect people back to God the Father, does not understand the brazen altar at all, and as such have not even begun to enter the real Presence of the Living Lord.
They are doing acts of religion, but the reality is not inside them, in their hearts.We have to ASK Jesus in.
No I am talking about the three personal and corporate stages of maturity as outlined in 1 John 2:12ff "Children, young men,fathers." This is spiritual development , not age.
It is not possible to have a church full of people at one level, nor, as in life, desirable.It is not like a school. No , I am talking "destination".
Imagine buses. Say London ones : Watford, Golders green , Marble Arch,Waterloo station,say. ie going south. So you wish to get to Waterloo, but your bus only takes you to Golders green (incidentally it's Jewish).
A first level church will only take you as far as evangelicalism. Faith in Christ. A basis of faith for living.
A secondlevel church can either like Keswick, point you to the exchanged life, or be charismatic, and teach you functionally about entering into, and moving in the Power of the Spirit.They are rarely both, I have found.
A thirdlevel church, has as its end goal, mature sons of God. Now, as we will see, every other level will claim they do this...because no one likes to think of themselves as immature....but the Holy Spirit will soon find you out if you are faking it.
So, I recommend looking into the destination on your church wall...it will save future frustration.
The fourth ground rule
If you have ever read the Intercessor magazine produced by the people Norman Grubb was with called Zerubbabel, or if you have read my blog " 080808 On,now,to the third level" you can be excused for mistaking "the independent self" teaching and Christ as me in my form, for the third level.
This is NOT so. Sorry. The believing of these things into being is equivalent to the reckoning that goes on in Romans 6 and 7. It is NOT Romans 8,9,10 11 and 12....which actually, as Nancy points out with Norman, IS the third level.
The third level is like Ephesians, where you have spent Chapters 1 to 5 being matured into a position of KNOWING who you are in God. Then ON that basis....and only that basis....you move into battle and intercession as described in Ephesians 6. The THIRD level is the Poured Out Life for Others. You can have all the theory...but if the "fruit" of John 15 is not popping out the end of your branches...well, you ain't got it....or else, as it says, you are going through another season of pruning.
By the third level, you are not allowed your little quirks anymore,(quirks being what you personally like to believe in because it suits you. Jesus is King, and He decides what you get to believe in.)
You have to be what Smith Wigglesworth calls Word and Spirit.
If before, you were exchanged life....but had great hangups about Toronto...and you were blowed if you were going to stagger about looking silly....and you were going to remain in control at all costs....
Guess what?.....You can forget that! The Holy Spirit is coming to tickle you....so you lighten up!!
If before you were charismatic...with a particular predilection for funny tic noises and movements at strange times.......well, you're going to be learning about the Exchanged life, that you've skilfully avoided up until now....hmmm.....BIG TIME.
How can you tell a 2nd level church ?
The easy thing would be one sentence here. Read Jack Fortenberry's "Corinthian Elders",Darin Hufford on Free Believer's Facebook blog, and Stephanie Macentire. They have all done an excellent job at nailing the externals of 2nd level churches. They don't call it that, but that's what it amounts to.
There are two types. Some that are really quite happy and will remain as they are for years, maybe forever. Some, like Havant, or Rob Rufus's church in Hong
Kong "City Church International" are genuine "seeking the Lord as the face of the God of Jacob type churches". Perhaps they are TWOPLUS. If the hunger is genuine, you just know they are going to meet with God as a Church, as indeed He is doing.
TWOPLUS churches are interesting because certain Thirdlevel facets are already arriving.
I hope it's not too much exposure to say Havant are already pretty dead to "ministries". In the third level you just are ministry...so you don't bother ever talking about it.Most people in Havant are extremely prophetic...but they don't talk about that with anyone. Rather they talk about opening up wells of healing...that is the current faith challenge. In Havant, leaders are not always prominant at all.Christine and I spent 8 or 9 months not knowing John and Wendy Wilbraham were the pastors.There is a very high participation level. These are all good features.The best meetings are the Key of David meetings.I feel slightly less like a kamikazi suicide bomber in these when I bring some snippet of what I'd really like to share lots about.
You have to go through the young men reckoning stage to get to be a thirdlevel church.Many churches have made the charismatic realm a dead-end, with no vision for ever going further.These I am calling 2ndlevel churches.The destination on the church wall is 2nd level only .
First and secondlevel churches have this feature. Control.
They are still to some extent absolutely locked in their left-brains.Locked into step by step thinking. Pulling strings. They're frightened God won't show up, so they won't allow Him to be God.
Related to this, but by far the biggest feature underneath everything, they are still locked in the delusion of the independent self. This is the lie that the devil sowed in Genesis 3:5. that if you just take of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you will be like gods....able to be self-running beings in your own right. It sowed the lie about the Father being a rather distant angry God who doesn't really love us nor want the best for us, which has remained inside us for millennia. And it failed to say that there is no independent position anyway, so we switched by default to being run by Satan himself....for as Bob Dylan sang...we gotta serve somebody....and we became containers for another deity, little d....the devil.
2ndlevel churches universally don't want to hear this....and consequently cannot take on board huge sections of New Testament scriptures. They are like the multitude listening to Jesus message "Unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood you cannot have life within yourselves." And nearly everyone withdrew saying "This is a hard saying". This is the gospel of the Exchanged Life that very few want to hear. (Read Sylvia Pearce "Two deliverances at the Cross)
2nd level churches, in my experience, spend little time in Romans, Colossians and Ephesians. They have little or no overarching revelation on these, so therefore cannot begin the reckoning process needed for them to break into the third level. "Break in" is a good phrase, because it describes the energy needed as violent men/women of the Spirit, to take the Kingdom by force.
2nd level churches believe that Romans 6 and 7 is a repeat of Romans 3,4 and 5, which it isn't, it describes instead a new phase entirely.
Relationships are enormously affected by these lacks, because by not knowing properly who they were, and who they now are, they are unable to fulfil the scripture "henceforth we see no man after the flesh"...for their entire walk is to see people after the flesh, as independent beings.
I began part One describing John the Baptist very deliberately. Charismatic pioneer ministries today like Morris Cerullo, Rheinhard Bonnke, David Hathaway, Youth With a Mission, all stride the globe at a rate of knots, leading people into 2ndlevel revelation. It is true to say they almost bust a gut doing so, while secretly being very frustrated that so few are out there helping them.
Third level ministry is of such a higher order, that asJesus said about the Kingdom as to John the Baptist, so it is to the current "flatout" ministries....."the least of these is greater".
Why? Morris Cerullo's gospel, Benny Hinn's gospel, only talks about salvation and deliverances.
Well, you can deliver someone and then 7 times as many devils can come back in. But the thirdlevel gospel gets the root....Jesus said "I came to lay the axe to the root".
So as fast as Winkey Pratney(YouthWithAMission training course) is training up a friend of mine who came into Bible House Emsworth with me later, just as fast this lad is marrying, getting divorced, and having to completely rebuild his life, because at no point....even in all the subsequent Word of Faith teachings of the Copelands which he attended, were the real roots of the gospel explained or preached to him.
Out of my whole Live in Community Bible College I attended, very many have divorced already, and even a surprising number are dead. It is a very dangerous thing to half build the Tower of God. We expose ourselves to ridicule and open ourselves to much danger spiritually.
2ndlevel Christianity does not work. It is flawed. Even in the time of Israel, all of them were intended to go right into the Land, not die in the Wilderness. 2ndlevel Christianity was NEVER meant to work....it was only ever meant to be a through stage to get to the third level.
If you are a 2ndlevel leader it is exhausting, because nobody reaches the stage where they take your place as a father ministry. This leaves only one option:install a leadership that you can trust while you remain at the top of the pyramid.Who can you trust? Well on the one hand it's the blessing of God that your kids have followed you into the Kingdom....but it's quite another to say they should be given positions over the same work....and especially if you are still the string puller at the top.And where do you get the idea that YOU do the installing anyway? A man's gift makes way for itself. All a ministry is, is the grace ability to move people on inthe Spirit by transplanting Christ, transplanting Word. What's this CEO corporation you are building anyway?
The true Tabernacle and Temple
But Jesus said “I will tear down this temple (meaning His body now) and rebuild it in three days, signifying by what death He was going to die.”
Why , in this discussion is this important?
Because Jesus was going to do something no one had ever done before. Ever.
Outside of our time world, He had declared “Today, I have begotten you, It is written of me in the book, “I come to do your will O Lord.””
The Word that dwelt with the Father was not human, but God, present at the foundation of our known world. He was saying an Eternal “YUP”……
to becoming a containing vessel like us,
to becoming fully human
and to, (for the first time anywhere, ever,) bringing human flesh in its now glorified form
into the very Presence of the Father in the Holiest Place.
Never. Never. Never. Had anything like this ever happened.
Before this the Word had dwelt in the Presence of the Father….but never had a human.
So for the first time in heaven , now since the ascension, a human stands on the righthand of God the Father. And guess what? It gets better! He is interceding there for us. Why is that good? Just because He’s good at praying…so that us struggling little beings make it to the end of our lives without losing faith?
Nope.
His intercession is for us to catch the revelation on our insides that He has prepared a place for us. What, you mean rent-a home, on the outer reaches of heaven somewhere in the outer circle?
Nope. You’ve completely missed it.
He is not ashamed to call us brethren.
The place He has prepared for us fellow humans….. Fellow containers of God Himself is in this unheard of place that no one in their right mind in heaven would have even contemplated…
The very Holiest of Holies. This new place where human flesh can go and yet still live.
This is what is meant by
He has opened up for us by a new and Living Way……..
a place at the right hand of God
A place in the very heart of the Father
A place, in that sense that no angel can ever quite get near.
A redeemed place.
A place that Satan chose not for himself, in the midst of the full glories of heaven…yes by a very deliberate choice..
and we, in the face of appalling negatives, by faith, on earth, surrounded by very real opposites, have chosen…yes
God Himself.
Because we are containers of His glory…
God designed this picture of it:
A wooden (representing human flesh) Ark of the Covenant
covered on the inside and the outside with gold, representative of His Kingly glory.
Inside this Ark are the Two Tablets of the Ten Commandments.
This is Jesus life within us, in exactly the same way that Jesus on earth here , as a human, was a container for the Father’s life. He is the actual Law keeper within us.
So how does this affect us?
How does this affect us? Are you kidding? Nothing that we currently do can ever quite remain the same.
First some ground rules.Did you notice how Nancy jumped in at the end of Part One and said this
"We have all three levels in us, when we have Christ in us"
and a few weeks ago when I was describing how it was now time for the Third level to be corporately manifested in the Church, she said "The mature Father level has always existed since the Church was born in Acts."
Do you remember me saying it is just as Ezekiel said...Wheels of prophetic outworking within wheels.
I describe this more in the Third Level audiomessage part 1 see picture link on my blog.
The arc , and probably the most important arc that Nancy is seeing began at the Cross, has always existed ever since and will culminate in ever increasing glory until the return of Jesus.
What I am declaring is quite specific and is no different , but perhaps stronger,with more clarity, than both Graham Pulkingham and later John Wimber. God's tide is no different than a gradually rising incoming sea tide. It comes in and goes out in individual waves, but the net effect increases until hightide is reached.I speak of the revelation of the Church, both local and corporate, which in the Spirit have little to differentiate them.
Something ,as I have stated repeatedly on my blog, of unique importance happened around 1906 as a man called Evan Roberts lay , conducting meetings, face down on a Welsh chapel floor. Yes, the return of the Holy Spirit supernatural form of Christianity returned in Wales,The Black Forest and Azusa St, but something even more incredible was happening. It was the birth of a Church actually beginning to function corporately, and not just as a man in a pulpit pulled strings. This was the Order of the Holy Spirit.The Order of heaven. A manifestation of the all but forgotten heavenly realm that Jesus Our High Priest moves in, the Melchizedek order of Hebrews chapter 7.
These sort of waves, only God knows about. Specific historic timings in God.
What Nancy is talking about is our foundation.
The Cross favours all or it favours no one
Jesus died to bring absolutely everyone back into a full and complete restoration to God the Father.
"The Fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in My Lord (the song from Colossians says)and we are complete in Him." We have everything pertaining to life and godliness in Christ NOW." We don't need to go up for it,that's to bring Christ down, we don't need to go into hell for it, that is to bring Christ back out of His sacrifice. As stupid as it may seem to our left-brains locked into what we can see hear touch and taste....our lives may not look like what we consider is Him....but if we just believe ON Jesus, on the very Power of His Life within us,He has promised to bring us ably to full maturity. It is not dependant on us willing and striving, it is dependant on the Power of His Life to get us there, from wherever we may be now.
Is that not rather cool?
As I stated in Part One, the order, the timing,the way,is entirely up to Him...providing we keep our hearts open to Him and don't as it says...harden our hearts, or allow any root of bitterness to rise up and take us clean out of His plans for us.This is why we encourage one another. Not just with friendly words...but because our words have spiritual power and strength as they come from the Holy Spirit.
As insane a thought as watching a cell divide and so develop into a complicated human Body....I mean the initial division doesn't look anything like it will look...so in the Spirit, our initial experiences may seem to be of absolute irrelevance to what we're aiming for. But that is just the nature of this present universe!!!!
The second ground rule
In every church, however dire,even the ones that have no idea about the gospel based on the finished work of Christ and not of works.....somewhere even there, is the stubborn "twinkler" in God who has somehow in this parched desert environment,reached full maturity in God...though he or she is blessed if she can tell why....they just...well....and tears fill their eyes at this point.....are in love with God...you see.
I know the Holy Spirit is a gentleman etc, and doesn't force Himself on anyone....yet I have noticed , because He only sees a full complete work of Christ at the Cross...He does tend to ignore the religious restrictions and mindsets of His people. Quite often He shocks those with little or no faith, byanswering their prayers and absolutely clearing someone's body of cancer. This is because when you are All powerful, and a full and complete annhihilation of all the Devil's works has been accomplished by the Son, Your co-worker at the Cross....it is terribly easy , by accidentally flicking your finger a bit too much, to 150% answer someone's prayer when they are only in faith for 10%. This is what is meant by He is well able to accomplish far above what we can even dream or think.
The power of the Word and faith over decades seems to have sufficient power to bring on even those who have spent their life kicking and screaming against loss of control, and baptism in the Holy Spirit, such that even they too reach an incredible maturity. It's just that the original plan for the Church was that this take 3, 4,5 years and not 70. If the disciples took only 3 years, what is possible in the Holy Spirit according to Jesus phrase "Greater things than these shall you see".
So the Holy Spirit is continually ignoring any first and secondlevellers plea for the quiet life, and rudely sends thirdlevellers in whose job it is, as it says in Isaiah, to stir the nest of the eagles, that they may be pushed out and forced to find their wings.
In general the Holy Spirit ignores all man made traditions and ideas of what Christians think Christianity is, to continually get believers to read of their position in Ephesians chapter 1 and 2, and in Colossians and Romans. He even gets the complete Bible to be read out in Anglican Churches. And gradually at least some start to get the hang of the radical stuff that Jesus has done for us.
The third ground rule
What is meant by a first, second or third level church?
Well according to the Tabernacle picture, a church that does not accept it's need for the shed blood of Jesus on the Cross to re establish and reconnect people back to God the Father, does not understand the brazen altar at all, and as such have not even begun to enter the real Presence of the Living Lord.
They are doing acts of religion, but the reality is not inside them, in their hearts.We have to ASK Jesus in.
No I am talking about the three personal and corporate stages of maturity as outlined in 1 John 2:12ff "Children, young men,fathers." This is spiritual development , not age.
It is not possible to have a church full of people at one level, nor, as in life, desirable.It is not like a school. No , I am talking "destination".
Imagine buses. Say London ones : Watford, Golders green , Marble Arch,Waterloo station,say. ie going south. So you wish to get to Waterloo, but your bus only takes you to Golders green (incidentally it's Jewish).
A first level church will only take you as far as evangelicalism. Faith in Christ. A basis of faith for living.
A secondlevel church can either like Keswick, point you to the exchanged life, or be charismatic, and teach you functionally about entering into, and moving in the Power of the Spirit.They are rarely both, I have found.
A thirdlevel church, has as its end goal, mature sons of God. Now, as we will see, every other level will claim they do this...because no one likes to think of themselves as immature....but the Holy Spirit will soon find you out if you are faking it.
So, I recommend looking into the destination on your church wall...it will save future frustration.
The fourth ground rule
If you have ever read the Intercessor magazine produced by the people Norman Grubb was with called Zerubbabel, or if you have read my blog " 080808 On,now,to the third level" you can be excused for mistaking "the independent self" teaching and Christ as me in my form, for the third level.
This is NOT so. Sorry. The believing of these things into being is equivalent to the reckoning that goes on in Romans 6 and 7. It is NOT Romans 8,9,10 11 and 12....which actually, as Nancy points out with Norman, IS the third level.
The third level is like Ephesians, where you have spent Chapters 1 to 5 being matured into a position of KNOWING who you are in God. Then ON that basis....and only that basis....you move into battle and intercession as described in Ephesians 6. The THIRD level is the Poured Out Life for Others. You can have all the theory...but if the "fruit" of John 15 is not popping out the end of your branches...well, you ain't got it....or else, as it says, you are going through another season of pruning.
By the third level, you are not allowed your little quirks anymore,(quirks being what you personally like to believe in because it suits you. Jesus is King, and He decides what you get to believe in.)
You have to be what Smith Wigglesworth calls Word and Spirit.
If before, you were exchanged life....but had great hangups about Toronto...and you were blowed if you were going to stagger about looking silly....and you were going to remain in control at all costs....
Guess what?.....You can forget that! The Holy Spirit is coming to tickle you....so you lighten up!!
If before you were charismatic...with a particular predilection for funny tic noises and movements at strange times.......well, you're going to be learning about the Exchanged life, that you've skilfully avoided up until now....hmmm.....BIG TIME.
How can you tell a 2nd level church ?
The easy thing would be one sentence here. Read Jack Fortenberry's "Corinthian Elders",Darin Hufford on Free Believer's Facebook blog, and Stephanie Macentire. They have all done an excellent job at nailing the externals of 2nd level churches. They don't call it that, but that's what it amounts to.
There are two types. Some that are really quite happy and will remain as they are for years, maybe forever. Some, like Havant, or Rob Rufus's church in Hong
Kong "City Church International" are genuine "seeking the Lord as the face of the God of Jacob type churches". Perhaps they are TWOPLUS. If the hunger is genuine, you just know they are going to meet with God as a Church, as indeed He is doing.
TWOPLUS churches are interesting because certain Thirdlevel facets are already arriving.
I hope it's not too much exposure to say Havant are already pretty dead to "ministries". In the third level you just are ministry...so you don't bother ever talking about it.Most people in Havant are extremely prophetic...but they don't talk about that with anyone. Rather they talk about opening up wells of healing...that is the current faith challenge. In Havant, leaders are not always prominant at all.Christine and I spent 8 or 9 months not knowing John and Wendy Wilbraham were the pastors.There is a very high participation level. These are all good features.The best meetings are the Key of David meetings.I feel slightly less like a kamikazi suicide bomber in these when I bring some snippet of what I'd really like to share lots about.
You have to go through the young men reckoning stage to get to be a thirdlevel church.Many churches have made the charismatic realm a dead-end, with no vision for ever going further.These I am calling 2ndlevel churches.The destination on the church wall is 2nd level only .
First and secondlevel churches have this feature. Control.
They are still to some extent absolutely locked in their left-brains.Locked into step by step thinking. Pulling strings. They're frightened God won't show up, so they won't allow Him to be God.
Related to this, but by far the biggest feature underneath everything, they are still locked in the delusion of the independent self. This is the lie that the devil sowed in Genesis 3:5. that if you just take of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you will be like gods....able to be self-running beings in your own right. It sowed the lie about the Father being a rather distant angry God who doesn't really love us nor want the best for us, which has remained inside us for millennia. And it failed to say that there is no independent position anyway, so we switched by default to being run by Satan himself....for as Bob Dylan sang...we gotta serve somebody....and we became containers for another deity, little d....the devil.
2ndlevel churches universally don't want to hear this....and consequently cannot take on board huge sections of New Testament scriptures. They are like the multitude listening to Jesus message "Unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood you cannot have life within yourselves." And nearly everyone withdrew saying "This is a hard saying". This is the gospel of the Exchanged Life that very few want to hear. (Read Sylvia Pearce "Two deliverances at the Cross)
2nd level churches, in my experience, spend little time in Romans, Colossians and Ephesians. They have little or no overarching revelation on these, so therefore cannot begin the reckoning process needed for them to break into the third level. "Break in" is a good phrase, because it describes the energy needed as violent men/women of the Spirit, to take the Kingdom by force.
2nd level churches believe that Romans 6 and 7 is a repeat of Romans 3,4 and 5, which it isn't, it describes instead a new phase entirely.
Relationships are enormously affected by these lacks, because by not knowing properly who they were, and who they now are, they are unable to fulfil the scripture "henceforth we see no man after the flesh"...for their entire walk is to see people after the flesh, as independent beings.
I began part One describing John the Baptist very deliberately. Charismatic pioneer ministries today like Morris Cerullo, Rheinhard Bonnke, David Hathaway, Youth With a Mission, all stride the globe at a rate of knots, leading people into 2ndlevel revelation. It is true to say they almost bust a gut doing so, while secretly being very frustrated that so few are out there helping them.
Third level ministry is of such a higher order, that asJesus said about the Kingdom as to John the Baptist, so it is to the current "flatout" ministries....."the least of these is greater".
Why? Morris Cerullo's gospel, Benny Hinn's gospel, only talks about salvation and deliverances.
Well, you can deliver someone and then 7 times as many devils can come back in. But the thirdlevel gospel gets the root....Jesus said "I came to lay the axe to the root".
So as fast as Winkey Pratney(YouthWithAMission training course) is training up a friend of mine who came into Bible House Emsworth with me later, just as fast this lad is marrying, getting divorced, and having to completely rebuild his life, because at no point....even in all the subsequent Word of Faith teachings of the Copelands which he attended, were the real roots of the gospel explained or preached to him.
Out of my whole Live in Community Bible College I attended, very many have divorced already, and even a surprising number are dead. It is a very dangerous thing to half build the Tower of God. We expose ourselves to ridicule and open ourselves to much danger spiritually.
2ndlevel Christianity does not work. It is flawed. Even in the time of Israel, all of them were intended to go right into the Land, not die in the Wilderness. 2ndlevel Christianity was NEVER meant to work....it was only ever meant to be a through stage to get to the third level.
If you are a 2ndlevel leader it is exhausting, because nobody reaches the stage where they take your place as a father ministry. This leaves only one option:install a leadership that you can trust while you remain at the top of the pyramid.Who can you trust? Well on the one hand it's the blessing of God that your kids have followed you into the Kingdom....but it's quite another to say they should be given positions over the same work....and especially if you are still the string puller at the top.And where do you get the idea that YOU do the installing anyway? A man's gift makes way for itself. All a ministry is, is the grace ability to move people on inthe Spirit by transplanting Christ, transplanting Word. What's this CEO corporation you are building anyway?
So you are left with a bunch of unmotivated disappointed people who believed Christianity should work, but plainly doesn't, and now you have to work twice as hard motivating them to keep coming. Ofcourse huge numbers come in the front door of the church and walk straight out the back.
2ndlevel churches don't get the Cross and the Communion as Sylvia Pearce has shared.
If you are in a 1st or secondlevel church watch the Communion closely. Outside the revelation of the Holy Spirit it is almost impossible to maintain the right tone with the Communion.
It either becomes extremely heavy and as in Transubstantiation in Catholic churches...possibly very weird indeed...if not connected to simple faith....
or as in most new Protestant independent churches...an incredible levity bordering ludicrous.There will be an appreciation of the Blood of Jesus, but nearly no revelation at all on the Body of Christ.
Why?
This Body revelation (see Two deliverances at the Cross article by Sylvia Pearce June 2010 on my blog.) is precisely the missing ingredient which takes you on to the Third level.
Likewise 2ndlevel churches have no real idea how to maintain the wonderful Presence of the Lord in meetings, when outside. There is a similar kind of effect to Communion goes on. Struggling not to be too spiritual, nor to revert back to the flesh.....(it's an awkward time)
when ofcourse once your interior believing has changed in the third level....you are fully convinced of who it is living your life AND YET
it's not theory, because for some months ,years,decades you have learned to distinguish between "independent believing" and believing in your new life as Christ as you....having your senses trained as mature people ....
In the 2ndlevel , because you do not know who you are with any confident assurance, you put intolerable pressures on your congregation, on your spouse, your children, all those around you.
You spend way too much time organising outreaches not realising your extreme Body Odour is making people run a mile.
2nd level churches arrange house groups or cellgroups of people that normally would not be seen dead together. In one sense this is good discipline, to learn to relate to those you would not ordinarily be with. On the other hand, if you taught the gospel properly, so that as Paul said....I looked for Jesus crucified among you....and by this time, that everyone knew in the Spirit that they
have all died with Christ and that
it is not them who live, but it is Christ who lives within them....
such a savour of Christ is now swirling around...
like in the best Key of David meetings...
that you actually do want to spend the rest of eternity together like the Fisherfolk Community with Graham Pulkingham.
I was in a community where , at the highpoint there were 30 all together in a standard three storey house in Emsworth. It fell to me to build the rabbithutches...then using much of the same technology I built 3 x 2 bunkbeds for us lads. OK, we were all cramped together....but our hearts were never melded, so one person's bunk could have been a million miles away. We had separate existences because we were a 2ndlevel church...so none of us knew who we were yet.
2ndlevel churches are filled with political intrigue. They are pyramid shaped with a pastor at the top.The devil only understands pyramids. God the Father builds open relationship families.
2ndlevel churches have hidden and open structures. They have pecking orders.
1st and 2ndlevel churches have a reality problem. This becomes more intense, not less after having been baptised in the Spirit, because you now know for certain that God exists, and you are familiar with His actual Presence. Then like Peter at the Transfiguration, you have to go down in the valley again and face all the problems in the real world. Romans 8 does not deny the real world....the persecutions , the sufferings, the problems. Rich Novek's series of posts in May on my blog are excellent on this:
Seeing God only. No more compartmentalising. All of life is His unfolding plan.Even those "drawings"and "pulls" you're not telling anyone about.It's Him, not in the sense that He is doing the drawing...for as James says God tempts no man....but He means for us to face choices....it is not outside our "earth curriculum".
What do we desire? It is legitimate to own up to what is pulling us....but what do we do with it? This is seeing God in everything. We proclaim the truth about what God has done for us in the midst of "how it looks" to our eyes. We allow the Genesis figleaves to be ripped away. We allow our shame to be covered by Jesus all sufficient Blood Covering, but we go further , believing on His very Life to birth in our being His very life...which isn't just the absence of a particular sin.....it's so far the opposite...that when later we face say a roomful of people with "stealing" problems...we irradiate them with the grace glory of Jesus own" giving" kind of life.
Helen Rubio made a fantastic point (see her message Helen Rubio and the Russian Dolls on my blog).
She made the point that she doubted if we could go a lot further in advancing in worship in what is called the 3rd heaven...without going a lot further in our daily walk. Ofcourse this is said very much from a 2ndlevel framework.
The truth is.....you bettya! 2ndlevel worship is so bowed down by shame, and people wrestling with their feelings of inadequacy, because nobody has preached to them what Paul is actually writing, and what Jesus is actually saying that....yes there is a huge ceiling on our present corporate worship.
Learn the 3rd level walk and boy will the corporate level of praise and worship fly!!!!
At the moment the whole thing is a bit "ass about face" because people are trying to get into something Jesus put them in 2000 years ago. They are using the CDs of Hillsongs in a rather manic way, to plug the hole left by rather weird onesided preaching as to the true nature of the human condition.
And they wonder why it doesn't work.
So 2ndlevel churches duly send their worshipleaders off to get more training and anointing....when what they really need is to sit down and "get" the 3rd level teachings.
2ndlevel churches either struggle for cash, or make the gospel look ludicrous by using crass commercial (Jerusalem moneylender) techniques for clawing in the dosh.
The real point of the 3rd level is this. The Holy Spirit Himself brings us to the Romans 12 point of offering ourselves as a sacrifice. In my experience, this is not really a repeated thing...it is a defintion God brings us to.
Without that point being reached, you are going to spend your life as 2ndlevel churches cajoling,pleading,preaching repeatedly,generally pulling your hair out....
but the one thing necessary has never been faced...
they follow one leader
they have a handful of doctrines
they have never decided to be that person offering themselves FREELY in the day of Power
they follow man not God
they have never heard anyone preach many of the doctrines in the NT
they certainly have never heard one message on hebrews 7 about the Melchizedek order
they still think if you give money to God you'll run out
they've never grown up and they never intend to grow up
for faith comes only by "hearing"(gaining a spiritual capacity to hear) and hearing by the Word of God.
they live in cliques and sects.
they relegate all NOW words of God like Martha to the day of resurrection
they are 2ndlevel
Cindi Estep and Francois Du Toit like this.
Francois Du Toit check out Athanasius on the Incarnation, http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm#ch_1
Yesterday at 12:12 · Chris Welch thanks Francois will do
Yesterday at 12:22 · Cindi Estep Wow Chris! I will read over again a time or two, maybe three or four! Much to absorb here....To see Him in everything! Blessings ♥
Yesterday at 13:11 · Chris Welch Think I will too Cindi
Yesterday at 17:13 · John Madden thanks Chris and Joanne
19 hours ago · LikeUnlike ·
2ndlevel churches don't get the Cross and the Communion as Sylvia Pearce has shared.
If you are in a 1st or secondlevel church watch the Communion closely. Outside the revelation of the Holy Spirit it is almost impossible to maintain the right tone with the Communion.
It either becomes extremely heavy and as in Transubstantiation in Catholic churches...possibly very weird indeed...if not connected to simple faith....
or as in most new Protestant independent churches...an incredible levity bordering ludicrous.There will be an appreciation of the Blood of Jesus, but nearly no revelation at all on the Body of Christ.
Why?
This Body revelation (see Two deliverances at the Cross article by Sylvia Pearce June 2010 on my blog.) is precisely the missing ingredient which takes you on to the Third level.
Likewise 2ndlevel churches have no real idea how to maintain the wonderful Presence of the Lord in meetings, when outside. There is a similar kind of effect to Communion goes on. Struggling not to be too spiritual, nor to revert back to the flesh.....(it's an awkward time)
when ofcourse once your interior believing has changed in the third level....you are fully convinced of who it is living your life AND YET
it's not theory, because for some months ,years,decades you have learned to distinguish between "independent believing" and believing in your new life as Christ as you....having your senses trained as mature people ....
In the 2ndlevel , because you do not know who you are with any confident assurance, you put intolerable pressures on your congregation, on your spouse, your children, all those around you.
You spend way too much time organising outreaches not realising your extreme Body Odour is making people run a mile.
2nd level churches arrange house groups or cellgroups of people that normally would not be seen dead together. In one sense this is good discipline, to learn to relate to those you would not ordinarily be with. On the other hand, if you taught the gospel properly, so that as Paul said....I looked for Jesus crucified among you....and by this time, that everyone knew in the Spirit that they
have all died with Christ and that
it is not them who live, but it is Christ who lives within them....
such a savour of Christ is now swirling around...
like in the best Key of David meetings...
that you actually do want to spend the rest of eternity together like the Fisherfolk Community with Graham Pulkingham.
I was in a community where , at the highpoint there were 30 all together in a standard three storey house in Emsworth. It fell to me to build the rabbithutches...then using much of the same technology I built 3 x 2 bunkbeds for us lads. OK, we were all cramped together....but our hearts were never melded, so one person's bunk could have been a million miles away. We had separate existences because we were a 2ndlevel church...so none of us knew who we were yet.
2ndlevel churches are filled with political intrigue. They are pyramid shaped with a pastor at the top.The devil only understands pyramids. God the Father builds open relationship families.
2ndlevel churches have hidden and open structures. They have pecking orders.
1st and 2ndlevel churches have a reality problem. This becomes more intense, not less after having been baptised in the Spirit, because you now know for certain that God exists, and you are familiar with His actual Presence. Then like Peter at the Transfiguration, you have to go down in the valley again and face all the problems in the real world. Romans 8 does not deny the real world....the persecutions , the sufferings, the problems. Rich Novek's series of posts in May on my blog are excellent on this:
Seeing God only. No more compartmentalising. All of life is His unfolding plan.Even those "drawings"and "pulls" you're not telling anyone about.It's Him, not in the sense that He is doing the drawing...for as James says God tempts no man....but He means for us to face choices....it is not outside our "earth curriculum".
What do we desire? It is legitimate to own up to what is pulling us....but what do we do with it? This is seeing God in everything. We proclaim the truth about what God has done for us in the midst of "how it looks" to our eyes. We allow the Genesis figleaves to be ripped away. We allow our shame to be covered by Jesus all sufficient Blood Covering, but we go further , believing on His very Life to birth in our being His very life...which isn't just the absence of a particular sin.....it's so far the opposite...that when later we face say a roomful of people with "stealing" problems...we irradiate them with the grace glory of Jesus own" giving" kind of life.
Helen Rubio made a fantastic point (see her message Helen Rubio and the Russian Dolls on my blog).
She made the point that she doubted if we could go a lot further in advancing in worship in what is called the 3rd heaven...without going a lot further in our daily walk. Ofcourse this is said very much from a 2ndlevel framework.
The truth is.....you bettya! 2ndlevel worship is so bowed down by shame, and people wrestling with their feelings of inadequacy, because nobody has preached to them what Paul is actually writing, and what Jesus is actually saying that....yes there is a huge ceiling on our present corporate worship.
Learn the 3rd level walk and boy will the corporate level of praise and worship fly!!!!
At the moment the whole thing is a bit "ass about face" because people are trying to get into something Jesus put them in 2000 years ago. They are using the CDs of Hillsongs in a rather manic way, to plug the hole left by rather weird onesided preaching as to the true nature of the human condition.
And they wonder why it doesn't work.
So 2ndlevel churches duly send their worshipleaders off to get more training and anointing....when what they really need is to sit down and "get" the 3rd level teachings.
2ndlevel churches either struggle for cash, or make the gospel look ludicrous by using crass commercial (Jerusalem moneylender) techniques for clawing in the dosh.
The real point of the 3rd level is this. The Holy Spirit Himself brings us to the Romans 12 point of offering ourselves as a sacrifice. In my experience, this is not really a repeated thing...it is a defintion God brings us to.
Without that point being reached, you are going to spend your life as 2ndlevel churches cajoling,pleading,preaching repeatedly,generally pulling your hair out....
but the one thing necessary has never been faced...
they follow one leader
they have a handful of doctrines
they have never decided to be that person offering themselves FREELY in the day of Power
they follow man not God
they have never heard anyone preach many of the doctrines in the NT
they certainly have never heard one message on hebrews 7 about the Melchizedek order
they still think if you give money to God you'll run out
they've never grown up and they never intend to grow up
for faith comes only by "hearing"(gaining a spiritual capacity to hear) and hearing by the Word of God.
they live in cliques and sects.
they relegate all NOW words of God like Martha to the day of resurrection
they are 2ndlevel
Cindi Estep and Francois Du Toit like this.
Francois Du Toit check out Athanasius on the Incarnation, http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm#ch_1
Yesterday at 12:12 · Chris Welch thanks Francois will do
Yesterday at 12:22 · Cindi Estep Wow Chris! I will read over again a time or two, maybe three or four! Much to absorb here....To see Him in everything! Blessings ♥
Yesterday at 13:11 · Chris Welch Think I will too Cindi
Yesterday at 17:13 · John Madden thanks Chris and Joanne
19 hours ago · LikeUnlike ·
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