The Tree and The River and www.river-camp.co.uk

The Tree and the River

While I was pausing from this blog earlier this month, I was writing on other's blogs and also commenting on Facebook. Lydia of a Joy to be me wrote this great Norman Grubb statement:
"The usual thing we say when a crisis hits us is, “God permitted it”. That means that God is up there and we are underneath. But God isn’t up there at all! He is within. I never lift my eyes one single time to heaven to try to find Him up there, do you? I don’t waste my breath, my sight, or anything else. Why should I waste my time trying to get a Person to come down when He lives within me? I can see Him where He is, in a common bit of human flesh redeemed in His precious blood, packed full of the Holy Spirit.

This makes my whole attitude to life different. Once I recognize that God is joined as one with me, I no longer try to find him or get him to come and rescue me." ~ Norman Grubb
"Friends, the cross is not the objective. Union is the objective. The cross is the gateway. It’s not the end. The Christ is the end and He is joined to me forever and I joined to Him forever." ~ Norman Grubb

This my reply:

Can I just share my honest feelings here? When I first encountered Norman's group and they were sharing along these lines, I had been in a church (Emsworth) where He had Presenced us in some powerful ways...along the line of some outstanding miraculous occurrences in and amongst worship and prayer together in meetings.So I wasn't going to backtrack on any of this. Rather I wanted to "fill out" what I already knew about approaching God in a corporate setting, with much more revelation of how His life works in in and around us all day long.The fact remains that Norman's group were so much on this side of things that their corporate worship was ...well to say the least....pretty non-existant. A few 1940s timewarp Anglican campstyle songs at best, with great Norman lyrics. As a published songster of the 80s this all seemed pretty naff.While I've been away, I've been ploughing further through Frank Viola's From Eternity to Here and I've got to the bit where he is describing God's need for a home, and comparing the Garden of Eden with Revelation, in particular The Tree of Life and The River of Life.And it was like a light went on again!!! It's like this.In God there is a dry Life and wet Life, side by side. There is a Tree and there is a River.The Tree always was the inworked Life of God. The Cross has become our tree which annhihilates the Old, and but also at the same time gives us access to God's very own imperishable Life.Christ in our form. Him living His Life as us.But there is a wet life as well! And in all our internal wranglings over the true meaning of Romans and what God has done for us, we must not go back on the new things that God has been bringing into His Body again particularly in the last 100 years, which is more akin to the manifestation before people's very eyes of the River of God. When you put believing believer's in a room together, all focussed and moving from and in their Saviour, in love and praise and faith and victory, and declaration.... well things get very wet indeed!As I've said to Lydia and Shawna several times, it seems like up to now you get either Spirit or Word.Either Tree or River. Either Exchanged Life or River Life of the experience of the outpoured Spirit.Well in 1950 something changed. And as well as the healing revival which broke out at this time, there was also this other man- this American missionary in Argentina, who being so discouraged by not making any headway stubbornly refused to do another thing until he had met God. This was Ed Miller (book Thy God Reigneth, see book section in my blog).He was one of the first men, like Norman, to press through in a rendering of the Psalm 24 verse of scripture...to seek the Face of the God of Jacob...this generation who are to seek God's Presence as did Jacob wrestling at Peniel, where he had his name changed.The charismatic Jacob, who could faith in speckled sheep and striped sheep, was finally irreparably damaged...and for the rest of history there has existed an ISRAEL. Which is the final God version 3.0 of Man connecting with His Father. Abraham v1.0, Isaac v2.0 then Jacob,now Israel v3.0!!But what Ed Miller uncovered, and through a kind of quiet backdoor, this has now seeped right through the Body....was a new understanding of WET LIFE...of how the RIVER functions in practice. This is the understanding of how our Key of David meetings work...and to a greater and greater extent since Florida, how our main meetings now work.(See the links in This is Huuuuuge) It is certainly how Rob Rufus seeks to move, especially when he introduces people like Josh Mills. It is also how Rolland and Heidi Baker seek to move in their meetings.The tabernacle is both a picture for us of how spiritual Life manifests...both in Tree format and in River format. In Spirit and in Word. But all in Truth!!There's a brazen altar (dry) and a Laver (wet) there's the shewbread (dry) and the oil and lampstand(wet) and there's the hidden manna inside the Ark of the Covenant (dry) and the real Presence of God overhead between the Cherubim on top of the Ark (very definitely wet).For centuries the devil has divided the wet from the dry, Tree huggers, from the River splashers. And in the same way that a battery does not work if the dry plates are not immersed in the wet acid...we've had a representation of Christ in the earth that is pretty poor and unconvincing. Neither the plates nor the acid were wrong....but they need to be in proximity to work!!!!Norman Grubb needs to be right next to Rolland and Heidi Baker. Rob Rufus needs to be right up against Paul Anderson Walsh!!So do you understand where I am coming from?And we know this stuff is powerful because in the 50s straight after Ed Miller's encounter, evangelist Tommy Hicks stormed into Peron’s office, prayed for his family, and out of that boldness was then given the freedom of every major stadium in Argentina....which were each piled high with crutches of those healed. And in a few short years Argentina went from being mostly Catholic to much nearer 50-50 Protestant and Catholic.But the behind the scenes transactions had been done as Ed sought the face of the Lord and prevailed.
July 26, 2009 10:14 PM

RiverCamp 2009

River Camp 2009 begins this Friday through Monday.Day tickets are still available on the gate I believe. For more details click on the side link section of this blog.

RiverCamp is not beside a literal river. It is on a hilltop at Lenchworth near Evesham.The grounds have been used for decades as a healing centre, though really all they are is farmer's fields. Remember that is where the angels showed up to announce the birth of Jesus. And it was in Harrogate Cow Sheds that God literally birthed the new move in the UK in the Dales Bible Weeks 1976 and after.

Any blogreaders in the UK can come to our caravan and make themselves known. Havant Church are closing down for the weekend and as many as can make it are camping together up there, or the woossy, staying in Evesham bed and breakfasts.

Corporate worship is outstanding. Messages are key, cutting edge stuff, as well as reports about what is going on worldwide. And the general fellowship that happens all round the campsite is , as bloggers have found both in Atlanta and Hong Kong, as key as anything anywhere.Unlike other large conferences, there is really little agenda. That is why we like it. It's a bit like key of David. It's about God. It's about finding the flow about how He wants to relate to His people.

And the children's meetings...far from being also ran "babysitting" meetings...NOPE...some of them are better in activity, and cutting edge God stuff than the main meetings.CDs of the worship and messages are always available after the event.

Becca's quote

I conclude with Becca's quote at the top.You would have thought the Tree Experience and the River Experience would be a given in the Body of Christ as she has written.

Why then is Smith Wiggleworth's (almost parting) 1940s prophecy so significant: that in the last great move of God there would be a twinning together of Spirit and Word. The reason it is so significant is that up until the time of writing this blog in the last one and a half years...and let this blog be a tool towards it...

There is a very real split right through the worldwide manifestBody of Christ over this precise issue. When the Florida Outpouring was ongoing I could sense the first real signs of a marriage between the two just waiting in the wings to appear and this prompted the Parable of the Shekinah Construction Company

As I've written time and again: You get networks that preach who we are in Christ. Faithful Word preaching. But they have no clue how to approach God corporately and experience the manifest outpoured Presence of God. Or you get the most incredible manifestations of gifts and worship, but absolutely no concept that it is not a network that is being built around a group of charismatic men, it's about what Jesus called a "laying of the axe to the root"...and this did not mean Jewish worship and the Old Covenant...the root means : untying the knot where the knot first occurred in Genesis 3. And the full clarity of how Jesus did this has come through faithful servants such as Norman Grubb, that at the time of writing the larger Body of Christ are deaf to.

Christine's Hanging Basket example

So the Godliness post showed us that we need to be stacked out with God's Word

Not to impress friends
Not to pass RE exams
Not to walk around religiously quoting stuff to the guy at the fish and chips shop
Not to pass Bible College finals

We need to know the Word sdrawkcab forewards upside down(google doesn't do this)
Because this is how life works

Because when we know it ,it can begin to move from left-brain to right-brain
and become us...and not just something in our restricted "spout-zone"...the mouth region.

While this is happening there are some "direct lines of attack"


Swift right-brain or more importantly spirit insertion tools


(Cut -out the middle man...the gobby bit of you!)


The gifts of the spirit both for the user and the recipient are all geared for this.
The gift of tongues is one of the best for this.

Praise and worship. Praise literally waits for God. Literally is a reception foyer! Why do you think all Billy Graham crusades began with Cliff Barrows. And all Morris Cerullo events begin with Black African praise...(cos the English praisers are too cerebral and cannot be trusted to bring the real Presence of God)

Fire tunnels
This lovely technique is the Body in action. Instead of being prayed for by one anointed person,you go through a tunnel of a gazillion anointed people.


Fire Tunnels in the UK. I'm not an expert. But I do know we use them here at the May Conferences in Havant.



Larger tunnels - but anointing isn't always size right!!!- can be found here:

RiverCamp August Bank Holiday Weekend



We have a secret weapon in our church like Ursula...she is over 60 and should know better..well actually she shouldn't know better...she's called Sylvia. One of our Mums in Zion. A prayer warrior. Anyhoo at the last River Camp Fire Tunnel she could be seen staggering about...well that's far too mobile a word...more crawling and collapsing...then using her finger in the shape of a pistol...to shoot God's blessing on people.

She's high up in the local social services you know!!! No, I mean she is employed as a skilled worker! Not high up the register!!

River Camp, by the way is not some quaint Anglican come Scoutcamp by a river. There is no physical river in sight..or in site.... only the River of God.

In fact when I knew they did lots of "soaking" I imagined lots of girlies lying with their backs on cushions...doing some gentle Vineyard thing...thinking to myself...how on earth will Ben cope with that?

But it turns out it is an Elim Camp...but you'd never know...bit like Capel Bible Week that Ern Baxter preached at in 1976. Certainly no one from the inner core leadership of Elim in Britain ever shows up there...far too dignified!! Which is probably why it's OK.

The kids work is outstanding at every age level....often exceeding the adults meetings...which is saying something. The praise band is incredible. The presence of God almost floors you when you go onto the camp grounds because of decades of prayer and "healing rooms" (John G Lake-style)type activity there.

Last year we ran an "open caravan policy" for all the posh riff raff in our church who went and stayed in bed and breakfasts!!! They are not making that mistake twice. Many are staying on site this year.



Christine received special insight as a result of the last Fire Tunnel which ties in directly with these last posts about our spirits, and our spirits expressed through this so underdeveloped right-brain region of ours.
She was watering some hanging baskets during a dry spell after being away last summer. She noticed the first couple of waterings appeared to run straight off, because the soil was so dry.
She felt God say something about this regarding English left-brain people when confronted with the Holy Spirit . Those spiritual parts of us are so so so dry in England..
We're so used to living from, managing everything, doing everything from these little pea sized left-brain computers of ours...that when the water of the Holy Spirit is first applied...it cannot do anything. It almost runs straight off. We have to soak several times to even water those areas of us that eventually will have the capacity to recive God's Presence.

We have to do many repeated applications. We have to be like Naaman in the Old Testament and dip 7 times...both to humble our proud self-sufficient left-brains and also simply because our spirits need that to begin softening up and then be able to take the application!!
Our left-brains need humbling!!! Oh yes they do! They were never meant to be the foundation we live from. They are usurpers to the throne!! The truth is we are far bigger than that with far bigger capacities...to love, to laugh, to be filled with joy,
to praise, to receive wisdom - the supernatural, to fulfil the first and second commandments with ease...remember them??? Love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength and love others as we love ourselves....and even greater love than this in the New Covenant.
Einstein never learned about relativity from his left-brain. His left-brain only came up with the maths afterwards as a proof. He was dreaming about a sunbeam at the time. His right brain got it first.
The truth is Britain is a creative place. But you'd never know it from the left-brain buttoned up manner in which we conduct ourselves. People need acouple of units of alcohol before they will even talk to each other. What a country!!Famously known for this in all the world. Actually only a few steps off autism. Living with Argentinians during the 1981 Argentinian war period...but over here in Emsworth, this became painfully apparent.
Well England this is not Kingdom! So as more and more come into the new life in the Spirit...you'd better get used to a bit of change. As people become less Dalek like...and come into the real world. For over 100 years the English have been saying to Pentecostal people ...you're not in the real world. No England, we're becoming normal! You are weird...ask any other nation.

The left-brain tends to only function like Richard Dawkins says...from what it can receive as definite input from the 5 senses. So when externals dry up in hard times, all the left-brain can do is come back with increasingly shrinking data about its straitened circumstances. God gave me a picture of this like a hamster wheel. Britons who are locked into their left-brains are like a hamster....they think they are doing something definite, but in reality they are moving paper around, they are just going round and round on a wheel! And then they develop an education system to teach other people how to live on a hamster wheel. And they take great pride in it.Instead of teaching the stuff that came over to this country 2000 years ago in the gospel...."Seek God and Live".

We need to learn familiarity with the River of God!

Good Word Christine! Britain are you listening?


picture taken from http://www.ambius.co.uk/showcase/catalogue/hanging-baskets.aspx?gclid=CKuB_s28z5kCFQETGgodgGcytw Their views may not be reflected in this post

It's the Power that will bring the Young, Dan's last post

It is strange that Dan has just posted this.
I really haven't begun to share what happened to Christine and myself at various times through this year's RiverCAMP. And I have not much time right now. Bear in mind where I am coming from. My background is the power encounter in Great Kingshill in 1972 which energised a lot of us to spread the Kingdom around our year at school. I have hung around Morris Cerullo's events here, and Chicago and San Diego. I missed Toronto. But I have been schooled (and I mean that positively and negatively)by Ed Miller and Jorge Pradas in seeking God's face ,face down on hard concrete floors, for hours at a time sometimes, other times just lesser time periods...but really meeting with God on my insides...just knowing that a connection has been made and that the 3D answer is just a matter of time away.....it's just a necessary detail....a bit of the bureaucratic function of existence!!! What, you mean you want to actually see the results too!!!! That's just crossing the T's!!!!God's confirming Presence on a matter was always the final say...because time and time again the answer followed some time later. Folks, this was real stuff. We saw money come from nowhere to setup an outpost south west of Paris. We saw people in the same family in our church totally healed of leukaemia. We saw the most rebellious people in Bible House have such grace break through on them...they actually were streets ahead of any of us who were praying.

So..... the thought of lying on your backs on cushions while listening to worship music surrounded by lots of girlies for a few days was not my idea of a spiritually extensive breakthrough time.
I really began to understand Toronto better through Florida and our own glory conference in May.....because, as many of you bloggers will have realised by now sometime before Noah's flood:
Toronto is about the Father's love for us. And really marks a new season in the Body of Christ.
Mark Stibbe's teaching sessions were fantastic. As were all this year's speakers. But how much of the drive of our previous "work for the Lord" actually comes from our own "orphaned" view of existence. Oh I must work hard for the Lord so He'll accept me. Do you know, once we have a true Holy Spirit drive embedded in us we'll achieve more in a millisecond of actual obedient walk, than we'll have achieved over a decade with the other stuff.

So just to say....although there were soaking times....but we tended to actually fellowship together as a church(the 20 or so that were there)...and sad to say this is still all too rare at home in our busy schedules...... the worship and teaching sessions were really powerful, and God's Presence really hovered. I tell you what was really nice...haven't experienced this since the early Dales Weeks with Ern Baxter.....when God the Choral conductor brings in different sections of the Body in tongues throughout the large hall. Awesome.

But how this relates to Dan's blog is that the Youth Work was Outstanding with a capital STAND OUT. Do you know that the same Matt from Rustington who came over to pray over us as a church the other week...he was leading the over15's. He said he had never in his whole Christian life been in any meetings like the ones the 15 plus age group were having. There was a prophetic flow in one meeting he had never seen anywhere. When they took the praise...and my eyes are filling up at this point as I once again crack up, the young men were dancing with a vigour that you have never seen anywhere. The girls too. But generally if there is any life in a church, teenage girls will tend to bop around....but this was something else. And I'm crying yet again, because this was what Ern Baxter prophesied and I am now living right before my eyes...and what I put 20 years ago on a part of my double CD under the heading X - Rated Christianity : " Psalm 110 :3

Thy people offer themselves willingly In the day of thy power, in holy array: Out of the womb of the morning Thou hast the dew of thy youth.

4 Jehovah hath sworn, and will not repent: Thou art a priest for ever After the order of Melchizedek.

And there it is again : AFTER THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK.....which I've been writing to you about and you've been thinking ...what's this weird guy on!!! I didn't remember it was here....Now I'm crying again.

Have you seen a young army of men ...not sullen...not spaced out on drugs...not primarily interested in the next bit of skirt they can insert their member into, not the next fast car.....

but single - minded drive to see the Kingdom of God come down from heaven, to see Jesus worshipped with the respect that is rightfully His , and this done with all the strength they can muster, all the heart that God has given them.....I tell you, if you can still stay standing at that time,and not collapsed on the seat in front totally , absolutely wrecked, then you have more strength than me.