Tom Stewart's Methodist Experience

 

COME ALIVE

We all come from different backgrounds and different experiences. Some were raised in the church, some came from abusive families and relationships, some came out of addictions, some were liberal and some were conservative, and some had no roots in religion, and the list goes on. I was raised in a small farming community church named “Maple Grove Methodist Church” which is still located about 8 miles west of Des Moines, Iowa. We were regular attendees and my brothers and I earned recognition pins for not missing Sunday School year after year, yet our parents weren’t real Christians. As I said, it was a farming community church and most of the local farmers attended that church where they talked farming and personal things every Sunday, which often was the only day they saw each other. It was a social church. All during those years I don’t recall ever being told about Jesus as my Saviour or anything about the plan of salvation. I was taught about Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses, King David and the rest of the exciting Bible stories, but not about salvation.

When I was 10 we moved to Woodland, California and I continued in the scouting program called Boy Scouts of America. I wanted to earn my “God and Country” award for which I was required to do service for the church so I became a candle lighter (altar boy) for the Methodist Church in Woodland, and I was also involved in MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship). My parents no longer attended church since they didn’t know the people and they were no longer farmers.

After completing my scouting I left the church at about age 15. During my later High School years and college years I took up smoking, some alcohol, and began using recreational drugs. In college I studied world religions and played around with different philosophies and beliefs, then in November of 1972 I encountered Jesus Christ personally. Not a religion, not a doctrine, not a philosophy, but a person. I was filled with the Holy Spirit that day, and that day I determined that I was forever done with religion, traditions, programs, liturgy, and the paths men have crafted to get to God. I know I was idealistic and very simple, but I meant it! I meant it then and I still mean it now.

I clearly remember asking my Christian friends in those early days if the church leaders I began to encounter EVER had a fire, a passion, an ache in their heart for the things of God? When these leaders began, did they have the fire, and did it just go out and the ministry just became a job, a routine, like a business manager just managing the organization? Year after year, cycle after cycle, doing the same thing……is that the kind of God we see in the Bible? The only time we see that is when the people rebelled against God and spent 40 years walking in a circle doing the same thing over and over, eating the same thing over and over, seeing the same thing over and over, all the while their God was the God of a new song, a new thing….which He wanted to give to them.

There has never been ANY time in my life when I have been so surrounded by religion, by tradition, by programs and by an empty, Spiritless, form of Christianity or so-called Christianity. A “form” (or formula) of godliness but denying the power (dunamis), which is the leading of the Holy Spirit. Christianity devoid of God’s Spirit. I even see this in many so-called Spirit-filled churches which have made their program a routine!

I have seen and heard the presence of the Holy Spirit and what He does in the midst of a people. I don’t want more or less, just a church lead by the power of God. Many, many leaders I know love the knowledge of Jesus, and love the church, and love the Bible, but have NEVER “possessed” the true power of Jesus Christ because He has never truly possessed them. They also have never known the true infilling of the Holy Spirit, and His daily influence and direction.

So what can a person do? What if a person has never experienced a revival like the great awakening, 1859 Ulster, Azusa Street, Welsh, Hebrides, Asbury, Jesus People or some other move of God? The early church told of what they had seen and heard, yet today so many Christians have little or nothing to speak about because they haven’t seen or heard much. It is an individual thing. God wants a people with broken hearts and broken and contrite spirits. A people who passionately SEEK Him and won’t let up until they find Him in a way they have never known. A personal revival. Being filled with the Spirit, overflowing with the Spirit of God. Unable to contain the things of God, spilling over into a dry and thirsty world. A river of life flowing out of them, being the light of the world, on fire, passionate, gifted, warriors, overcomers, and ambassadors for Christ.

I have been part of prayer meetings with 50-100 people walking around, some kneeling down by chairs or at an altar, shouting loud, or speaking in a whisper, crying and laughing, dancing and mourning, but real before God. All in God’s order, not man’s order. Powerful, earth shaking, healing, faithful, prayer, rather than going around a circle and praying some lifeless, visionless words without faith. Is a new Christian community that has a countenance the world can see, oneled by the Holy Spirit who makes the world stand in wonder, with lives that challenge the enemies of Christ still possible? Must we wait for another revival, or can we make this the “normal” life in Christ? If this happens the world will want to meet the author and finisher of our lives!

What is the religious spirit?

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 It's kind of.a mirror to the Holy Spirit.
You cannot see both but you see their effects. In John 3 the image describing the Holy Spirit is of the wind.
So our main problem with folk caught up in religion here (on Facebook where these were two articles) is it is a spirit people have chosen for themselves to live inside, which gives them the idea that they chose the whole thing rather than be lured. By the Holy Spirit we can stab at the odd bad fruit but the person themselves have to become.weary with the whole.condition and want to leave. In an extreme.form this is true of witchcraft and freemasonry, which take the form of rituals and ordeals which suck you in further and further to demonic control. But the same is equally true of any thing labelled Christianity which isn't walking in the Light of God.as it is today. Today is the day of salvation. The eternal.now is.where the Holy Spirit lives. And God is the I Am Presence where any collective group gather in the actual.freshness of His Person. If not, like.Sardis, the church will have the name.of being alive, but are actually dead, with the candlestick removed.
In the end.....It's not even beliefs or.actions that cause us to withdraw from groups and conversations on Facebook.....It's the spirit you converse in as you discuss the Holy things of God. We don't argue. We don't fuss. While you talk in such a spirit we just back away. And if you had been in revival settings of the Fire of God you would know what you are doing, but you have probably never seen a real God event in your life. So you simply don't know the spirit in which you speak.
What is the religious spirit? Part 2
As stated in part one it's primary aim, especially in our immature state is to unhook us from the Live I Am Presence of God, the Eternal Now, the current Light of the glory of the Lord. In the Old Testament this was the Israelites following the Pillar of Cloud (of the Shekinah glory) by day and the Pillar of fire by night. Gradually the Israelites were divorced from the Presence of God until even the Ark was captured and led away, and as a memorial to the event, Phinehas's son was called Ichabod, or the glory has departed.
So is it possible to define the religious spirit and how it slowly eats away the Life of God from an individual or Move of God?
Yes it is and a spectacular example is Methodism.
I have no proof of this but in my spirit I feel that Methodism has been targeted more than most denominations because of its original threat and disturbance to the devil's plans for England.
Universities and Exeter was no exception, point out that England was so close to having a civil war. Freemasons had stirred up foment throughout Europe and America and their plans were to do the same in England. The problem was the preaching of Whitfield and Wesley. They preached the length and breadth of England. Thousands upon thousands were radically converted. Some parts of England like Cornwall actually had more Methodist chapels than Anglican ones.
The Jesuit/ freemasonic backlash against all protestant denominations, but above all Methodism has been to secretly infiltrate all seminaries with so called higher German criticism. The Luciferian dynasty that specialises in this is the Russell dynasty, which has produced, Bertrand Russell, Skull and Bones, Watchtower Movement (Jehovah's witnesses)Christ Scientist and several more directly or indirectly.
However in modern Methodism we can watch in real time how a movement that was white hot for the Lord, bringing in innumerable converts became a virtual death wish waiting to happen. This was the denomination in which I was raised before I ever heard the gospel at 13. It caused me to become an atheist at 12.
During the period that the Ark of God's presence was taken from Israel by neighbouring tribes, the outer forms of worship continued, and this is true of the Methodism I saw.
Hymns were sung, always 150 year old ones. Communion was celebrated and infants baptised just like Catholics and Anglicans, and humanist sermons were preached.
So what was eroded by the religious spirit?
The requirement to experience being born again, the insistence on an experience of grace.
The "methodical" system of class meetings was stolen by Marxists, while in Methodism it degenerated from being a vehicle of discipleship to a venue for reasoned and philosophical discussions around the Bible, which it nolonger regarded as inspired by the Holy Spirit .
instead of following the Holy Spirit as He reintroduced adult baptisms via the Baptist movement, and plurality of eldership via the Presbyterian and Brethren movements, the religious spirit eroded the organisation to being more or less identical to the Catholic/Anglican body it had come out from.
Certain Methodist splinter groups were formed, but how living these groups were, and how much the religious spirit turned their heaven/hell preaching into the heavy gothic leftbrain styling of Jesuits and Catholics, instead of a presentaion of real grace and life in Jesus Christ? Their bitter fruit is also scattered across Britain, with splits in famiiles, family feuds.etc.
The same religious spirit attacked the Brethren movement splitting it into some 30 tributaries by the 1970s. Certainly the Brethren as a Movement and the Methodists, like the Anglicans ,strongly rejected the outpouring of the Spirit through the 1900 Pentecostal movement.
A final effect of the religious spirit upon Methodism is its Que sera sera attitude to sickness, which you will see as a fruit of religiosity throughout the denominations.
Sickness is, they believe, a necessary evil, something for our sanctification, and while, certainly you go through the motions of prayer in the meetings, if as usually occurs, there is no healing, then it is assumed to be God's will.
A superb religious technique for never really exercising any faith and never having to take any responsibility, but inwardly blaming God for all.
Rob Frost in the 1980s-2000s was used to counter some of the religious spirit in Methodism and introduce people to the baptism in the Spirit. But Rob never ever quite left the intellectual realm in which Methodists operate, being a fervent believer in evolution and a lot of the other freemasonic ruses, many of which are still being uncovered. We are to use our judgment, but if our tool is not calbrated correctly in the Holy Spirit, the devil can tell us all kinds of lies with a BBC posh voice, and for sake of not losing face with our contemporaries, we will go along with it, when it is just hot air.

Christmas Letter to Paul Anderson Walsh

by Chris Welch on Monday, 24 December 2012 at 12:56 ·
Hi Paul,
I wish you and your family a wonderful Christmas.
I wanted to share some Christmassy musings.

Recently I have been finding myself doing some Jesus type stuff. Not really miracles yet, but another thing we find Jesus doing if we look carefully enough. He picked holes.You see the Lie is only at the end of the day a lie. A roughly cobbled together costruct that hides most of its shambles but never quite all.
And we notice that Jesus would, by the Spirit, pick holes at any constructs around Him. Usually Pharisees and Saducees. But also the disciples, so they could be brought into His Life and Light.Just as Steve McVey and yourself have tackled many issues, I've been nibbling away at Havant Church and tithing.

That's not the point I want to make, apart from saying the more I look at that subject, the more I see it as every bit a demon pillar wedged right into the church as was circumcision 2000 years ago. It supports entire edifices of flesh that stymie and shortcircuit the anointing of God.

The point I'm rather making is that as we believe Christ as me in my form we find ourselves doing things reflexively that we then read about as we study between the lines of the gospel. We start behaving exactly as He behaved around unbelief, and the independent self.But that really isn't the point I'm making either. I want to make a Christmas point.How "normal" is everyone's birth into Christ?The only reason I find I'm experiencing Jesus life doing stuff reflexively is because it was there in the first place. I was born normally by the Spirit.
And I have a suspicion you were too. And because you were...you no more fit into Kensington Temple any more, than I do Emsworth or Havant.

I've got a disadvantage here over loads of others. You see I haven't got round to reading "Safe and Sound " to check out my findings.

This was my birth, spiritually.
I was severely depressed and atheist (after a Methodist upbringing by physics teachers ) for a year at 12. I had also overachieved at school getting 11 A's. And it hadn't made a scrap of difference. And my Dad's lineage, which had had "distant" parenting, meant that I'd been seeking for some sort of Father's love, by doing, by performing.
Now through the Billy Graham films which my schoolfriend practically frogmarched me to, I sensed the Holy Spirit. And it was the Presence of God even more than Billy Graham's message that collared me.
6 weeks later I was baptised in the Spirit in a God-ordained Melchizedek operation, where two leaders from a Baptist and Anglican Church had dreams about a Holy Spirit Teach in Day. It happened in neutral territory in a suburban house in Great Kingshill Bucks, round the back of Prime Minister Wilson's personal hideaway cottage.Several things here right away that I call Spirit normality.
It was an Anglican Baptist event which only happens in the Spirit!!!!
It was in the context of a teach in on EVANGELISM which surely IS the context.
It was a Melchizedek Order event...dreamed up by Jesus as a one off never to be repeated thing and transmitted supernaturally and separately confirmed.
But how about this?The way my Baptism in the Spirit occurred was like this.
So we're upstairs in a big bedroom...about 6-10 of us being prayed for.
I'm highly leftbrain because of physics teacher parenting.
Everybody and I mean everybody rattles off in tongues. Me nothing.

Not until someone says....well...you have asked in faith, now just begin thanking the Lord in faith that He's heard you.
And almost immediately after praising the Lord, I sensed the Lord filling me.I was too leftbrain for tongues. That happened a month later!!!But here's the interesting bit...because in 1972 I ahdn't read David Swan's book Holy of Holies written in 2006 or something.
But God impressed on me that I needed to obey Him in the Spirit. He said, "Shout at the top of your voice, Hallelujah!"
I even asked permission of the people. You see I just felt all of suburban British niceness weighing in on me. And more
than that. I felt that whatever I did was going to affect the course of the whol;e of the rest of my life...so it had to be quite
a choice.

And, quite unlike a son of two physics teachers I yelled at the top of my voice.
The Holy Spirit literally crashed on my being. I couldn't stand straight.It was very Toronto.
They helped me downstairs afterwards.People said my face glowed.The point I want to stress is, there are definitely two levels in that portion of the heavenly Tabernacles.
And the Holy of Holies is like FIRE.
And I took that fire into school in Dr Challoners and in especially our year, we had a mini revival.
And actually later our school headboy was mightlily converted too...a man called David Foster who became
a High Wycombe vicar.So here's the deal.
I think you know me well enough to know I've not written all this so that you'll buy posters of me and put them
all round the wall for your next video.... NOPE....
Watch this....What better way of viewing a "normal" birth than looking at Jesus....the only Man that ever lived normally!!!
What clues can we gain?

Bethlehem was a Melchizedek Order event. Written about centuries in advance.Yet when it happened
all the preparations didn't mean squat. It was a Herod's quick whim to have a census!!! And Bob's yer uncle.
There WAS NO ROOM humanly. Melchizedek events DON'T FIT into Human arrangements.
The only people there were there supernaturally. Mary and Joseph had both been warned by an angel
that she as a VIRGIN was to become a MUM!!!
The shepherds were warned supernaturally by a choir of praising angels. (Praise is in the picture)
The Magi were people of Substance...but their substance didn't help them. They had to be on
some sort of supernatural wavelength to get this one. (From this we learn the Melchizedek Order
is a great leveller...whether shepherd or magi)
And the Magi's gifts all talked about the 3 stages of glory
the 3 levels of growth.
http://080808onnowto.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/third-level-message-is-in-three-kings.html
In a nutshell, the Holy Spirit lays a foundation of the gold....OUR GLORY as we have died and been resurrected in Jesus Christ. A DONE DEAL.The frankincense representing the REAL PRIESTHOOD we are called to and introduced to in the BAPTISM of the HOLY SPIRIT.
And the myrrh...of our 3 deaths....death to the world....death to all we thought we were....and death on behalf of others to reproduce the same glory of Jesus in others.

Viewed from Jesus' manger eye view I do not really "get" what the shepherds were doing.
But I do get the 3 magi.Attending any normal Spirit birth is specific Word. Specific calling.At two levels.
At the level of say St Peter, when Jesus said....Leave your nets and I will make you a fisher of men.
But secondly, when ministries from the OUTSET give a 3 level gospel but in the form of an already DONE DEAL.
That we are already COMPLETE IN HIM.
This is the message from the outset of the magi.So you can see where I am coming to Paul can't you?

Who are going to be the new ministries who midwife this environment...this Melchizedek environment
for normal births to occur in.

We have precursors.
Katherine Kuhlman say.

What about Morris Cerullo who more than getting people to do 3 years seminary courses, seeks
to blitz people in 3-5 day School of Ministry events.

What about the revivals Daniel Yordy and I are currently studying to glean a history of the emergence of
a three stage, three level gospel?

I have just read again about the Great Awakening 1740s and 50s which among other componants contains
"free flowing ministries" zapping from nation to nation USA to UK and reverse. Unheard of til then.
So like the 12 standing together in Acts 2....THIS IS A HUGE componant part of Big Revival.
Same 100 years later. Same in 1906. The bouncing around of ministries as they each catch more fire off the other
and the conflagration is huge.And what about this tidbit? The two or three people groups to experience an actual rushing Mighty wind are
all those NOT BROUGHT UP LEFTBRAIN LOCKED.
David Brainerd and the North American Indians 1745.
Ed Miller in the upper room in the 50s Argentine revival
Mel Tari in Indonesia in the 60s.
The 1990s Inuit revival whose recording is actually on google or Youtube somewhere.

Here's to normal Birthchambers and Mangers!!!Chris