Your Almighty Friend! – Octavius Winslow

 

Your Almighty Friend!

(From Octavius Winslow’s, “Christ, the Mighty God”)

Because Jesus is the Almighty God, His
people have an Almighty Burden Bearer.

We are a burdened people.

Every believer carries a burden peculiar to himself.

What is your burden, O believer?
Is it indwelling sin?
Is it some natural infirmity of the flesh?
Is it a constitutional weakness?
Is it some domestic trial?
Is it a personal or relative trial?
Is it the loss of property?
Is it the decay of health?
Is it soul anxiety?
Is it mental despondency?

Come, oppressed and burdened believer,
ready to give up all and sink! Behold Jesus,
the Almighty God, omnipotent to transfer
your burden to Himself, and give you rest!

It is well that you are sensible of the pressure,
that you feel your weakness and insufficiency,
and that you are brought to the end of all your
own power.

Now turn to your Almighty Friend, who is
the Creator of the ends of the earth, even
the everlasting God, who does not faint,
neither is weary.

How precious is the promise addressed to you!
“He gives power to those who are tired and worn
out; he offers strength to the weak. Even youths
will become exhausted, and young men will give up.
But those who wait on the Lord will find new strength.
They will fly high on wings like eagles. They will run
and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.”

Oh, what strength there is in Jesus for the
weak, and faint, and drooping of His flock!

You are ready to succumb to your foes,
and you think the battle of faith is lost.

Cheer up! Jesus, your Savior, friend, and brother,
is “the Almighty God,” and will perfect His strength
in your weakness. The battle is not yours but His!

Jesus sustains our infirmities, bears our
burdens, supplies our needs, and encircles
us with the shield of His Almightiness!

What a Divine spring of consolation and strength
to the tired and afflicted saint is the Almightiness
of Jesus. Your sorrow is too deep, your affliction
too heavy, your difficulty too great for any human
to resolve. It distances in its intensity and magnitude
the sympathy and the power of man.

Come, you tossed with tempest and not comforted;
come, you whose spirit is wounded, whose heart is
broken, whose mind is bowed down to the dust, and
hide for a little while within Christ’s sheltering
Almightiness!

Jesus is equal to your condition.

His strength is almighty!
His love is almighty!
His grace is almighty!
His sympathy is almighty!
His arm is almighty!
His resources are infinite, fathomless, measureless!

And all this Almightiness is on your side, and will
bring you through the fire and through the water.

Almighty to rescue, He is also your Brother and Friend
to sympathize. And while His Divine arm encircles,
upholds, and keeps you; His human soul, touched
with the feeling of your infirmities, yearns over
you with all the deep intensity of its compassionate
tenderness.

The Oppression of Youth And Dominionism

From Blogger Galations 4

http://galatiansfour.blogspot.com/2011/10/oppression-of-youth-and-dominionism_08.html

One caveat before I begin this one, this post is not about all parents that happen to go to Dominionist focused churches, there are people even within those churches who dearly love their children and treat them right but trends that are happening with different areas and with some teachers. I am going to be taking on multiple trends, they all come out of circles of Dominionist influenced “Christianity” and to me show how the totalitarianism of Dominionism is not just intended for the political order but the family as well.

More and more you see abuse out there put under false “Christian” guises. That is a major problem but in Dominionism, there is definitely an emphasis on extreme authoritarian parenting that is growing. One thing about young people, too many Christian parents think they can *make* them be Christian and *force* them to be good people. It’s not going to happen. Only God can truly convict hearts and every individual’s faith must be personal, it does not come about via Mom or Dad. It doesn’t happen that way. A grown child or child needs to be born again themselves, and in freedom, train a child in the way they should go as the Bible states but the Bible also states this:

Eph 6:4 And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Notice one of the words NURTURE??

One of the most evil two words together I have always seen is the misnomer known as TOUGH LOVE. You wonder who came up with that one? While I can understand parents not giving into to their drug addicted grown-child’s demands, much of tough love was forwarded for the younger set. As if this world isn’t tough enough, in pummeling the young person with unemployment, coldness, and endless competition just to survive, instead of parents being told comfort and help their children, they are told to be tougher, and hard. While children should be brought up with some responsibility, and self reliance, things really got out of whack here. How much of this was used to undermine natural family ties of love and affection?

While decent parents may face times when it is necessary to let an older grown child go in making their own decisions that are ungodly, and deal with children who are facing other problems, there is something seriously wrong out there, in that too many parents think they can CONTROL their children and even grown children and force them into submission.Too many are making it about breaking the child’s will in fact that is the focus, to break the will of the child, so they become a broken person, to submit and bring total unthinking blind obedience. The seeds of Dominionism, are not just for the government and politicians, they are working on the social order, the families and have for decades.

I have talked about how in Vision Forum and patriarchy has been advanced where obedience to one’s father [not the Heavenly Father] is put at the top of the list even for grown women and adult sons. Actually few realize all this total obedience is just how Islam does it in their fundamentalist circles for women, where even a widow must obey her grown son. Vision Forum advances total patriarchal obedience this is sold to well meaning people under the guise of ‘protection’. Of course Vision Forum never addresses the problems of abusive fathers, or ones who may not even be Christian, or the oddness in a grown woman never becoming her own person. The reality is that if you remain unmarried and at home “obeying”, that one day, your parents will die from old age and when people hit their middle years, this is more common then not. This website is right about this aspect of Vision Forum:

Young women will be protected from the debauchery of college men, Vision Forum promises – if they stay home and obey their fathers. Middle aged women will be free from the pressure to conform to an idealized image of sexy, Vision Forum asserts – if they stay home and obey their husbands. What is this? You will be valued and protected if you surrender all your rights and obey your male authority? THIS is the solution Vision Forum offers!

This doesn’t sound so bad to a point, who doesn’t want a child to learn to be able to sit still, and listen to their teacher or to their parents or not spending hours bickering…But few have heard of something called “blanket training” and this is something the Duggars have used [I do not know if the Duggars use any of the physical punishments or not spoken of below]

One lady with seven children describes how to blanket train on her website, while some of her ideas are good like keeping children busy during long sermons looking for certain words, the blanket training methods seem pretty worrisome. Do not forget a child’s natural inclination is to explore the world around them, and this definitely puts a stop to that.

Blanket training” has been one of the most helpful tools for me! I only wish that I had heard about it before my 7th child came along!! The sweet lady who explained blanket training to me called it her “playpen in a purse”! This concept involves placing your baby or toddler on his/her favorite blanket, explaining to the best of their understanding that they must stay on their blanket, and then demonstrating the consequences of getting off the blanket with a small rod or switch. Simply switch the floor or carpet all around the outside edges of the blanket and firmly but sweetly say, “No, No! Don’t touch!” Give your child few favorite toys to keep his attention, and switch the toys out every little bit, and that child will learn to stay on his blanket for quite a long period of time. Begin with just 3 – 5 minutes with very young children, and after practicing every day for several weeks, he will build up his time to play happily on that blanket until he can stay there for an hour or more! What a joy and a help this was to me when I had the older 6 children in school and needed to spend time with them! The joy of this training is that you can fold that blanket up, put it in the diaper bag, and take it easily to a friend’s house, or visiting new church members, and your child will sit quietly without disrupting the visit! One of my pet peeves is when folks come to visit and just “unleash” their children to invade every room of your home! What chaos! This blanket training is easily converted to “church training” when you begin taking your young child into the services. Simply fold the blanket and put it on the pew and your child will already understand the limitations and rules!

Another website, describes blanket training more.

1: STAY ON THE BLANKET! Place the baby or small child on the blanket with a basket or Rubbermaid container full of items that are only taken out when blanket time is in session. Explain, even to babies, that they are to stay on the blanket and not get off or they will receive a small swat on the diaper. This may seem harsh, but the Bible clearly teaches that rods of discipline are to be used for training and discipline. With consistency your child will only require a few swats, at best. As soon as your baby or small child leaves the confines of the blanket, swat first and then explain gently as to why he or she was reprimanded. Place the child back on the blanket and repeat, as needed.

She writes on the website, the “swats” are to be light taps, I think it’s scary for someone to spank babies too young to know what is going on, and it’s very worrisome, notice the focus on CONTROL. Is doing what is easiest for parents, always best for the children? What about the child’s natural inclination to explore. What about natural interaction between mother and child, where the mother does not become a prison warden? Is that what these “Christian” parents want to be prison wardens of perfect little robotic step-ford children? Some of the rules are odd, in telling the other children not to talk to the “baby” being blanket trained. Many of this “training” is not starting at one year or two years, but for babies who are just starting to crawl.

While the Bible speaks of training [disciplining not training like a pet] a child, this definitely takes things way too far. Now the Duggars do seem to love their children, but one wonders how things will be for them as they grow up where so much of their lives have been directed and seemingly from a young age. One can see the blanket training still in operation. Are personalities of total obedience and repression healthy ones? That is something to think about.

To me it sums up some really weird attitudes out there in some areas of the “Christian” world about young people. Do some of these people even see children as unique human beings who have the same dignity in God’s eyes as themselves but happen to be younger ages? Do they see them as one day future adults who will have to stand on their own two feet? What is very odd to me, and I am thinking back to college psychology classes here, is that a lot of the “training” not just the blanket training seems to remind me of extreme godless psychology, especially from the branch called “Behaviorism” made famous by B.F.Skinner. He operated via Operant conditioning principles, the blanket training doesn’t seem to far off, to tell you the truth:

B. F. Skinner’s entire system is based on operant conditioning. The organism is in the process of “operating” on the environment, which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around its world, doing what it does. During this “operating,” the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer. This special stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant — that is, the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. This is operant conditioning: “the behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behavior in the future.”

His Skinner boxes used rats, but he wanted these things used on human beings, where reward and punishment would direct all behavior. I saw the use of such things even in a R.E.T. [Rational Emotive Therapy] System popularized by a different psychologist that was used in a secular school I worked in to the point that reward, demand and points were all scripted, and children not treated as individuals but had points mechanically assigned for good behavior and reduced for bad. If any of the staff deviated from the scripts [we had scripts we had to follow even during their misbehavior], we were to be reprimanded. In high school I remember reading Walden II where Skinner imagined a “new Utopian society” with use of his behaviorism. I have even known of schools of psychology where behaviorism was idealized and promoted at least 25 years ago. Hate to say it, but I see it’s tendrils having entered in all over the place with these youth schools, “Christian” child training programs and the rest.

When I read about some of the child training, nothing about it seems biblical, they throw out a few verses but who ever heard of blanket training for babies in the 1890s the period of time they love to invoke? Even the Pearls seem to use a few of these “behaviorist methods” where “negative stimuli is supposed to invoke desired behavior”…This one is pretty scary:

A tiny stimulus to direct the child when they are small is enough. For example, if a 3 month-old nursing baby bites, don’t spank. She does not know she did bad. Just gently pull a hair on her head. She will startle back in momentary discomfort and immediately start nursing again. The tiny bit of discomfort makes the baby relate the biting down with the gentle pulling of the hair. You have not made her obey, you have only conditioned her to respond differently. That is training.

and here too…

But they cannot be absolutely trained. Proper application of the rod is indispensable to communicating the divine principle of retributive justice, but any child, military man, employee, the neighbor’s kid, your dog, cat, or the birds in your yard can be trained through manipulating their relationship to their environment. Any creature that is self-motivated and has likes and dislikes can be trained if you are in a position to reward or deny any pleasure or need. Where humans are concerned you have the added tools of reason, moral persuasion, social persuasion, and conscience. Where it concerns those that are close to you, that is, they depend upon your fellowship for their mental satisfaction, you have the additional tools of persuasion and example.

Are parents supposed to “CONDITION” children or are they supposed to teach them in a loving fashion? How much of these teachings are based on CONDITIONING and inherited from the psychology world, where ‘conditioning” was used to ensure desired behaviors from animals and then translated onto children? The Pearls themselves even connect their methods to animal training and you can see multiple examples on the first page of their book “To Train Up a Child”.

Here we see the promotion of things, that lead to more disconnection between humans. One part of human growth is learning to be connected and loved by their first care givers. It is supposed to be about a relationship not about control and a long list of rules. Even thinking regarding one’s relationship with God and what that is to entail, you wonder how these people went this way.

Where is the humanity in all of this stuff? Why have parents be ‘drill sergeants” instead of loving, teaching, providing care or preparing young people for an independent adult life. While parents do have to put down some consequences for bad behavior and teach children right from wrong, total control is wrong. A true Christian adult life, should be directed at the Lord’s behest, conviction via the Holy Spirit, not just following a long series of rules, that others have set up for you or via CONDITIONING that started in infancy to keep you compliant. It shouldn’t be about not allowing you to grow up.

There is some natural separating from children and their parents as they grow into adulthood, seeing this suppressed so adamantly is scary. If you want your child to be a Christian telling them, you better be a Christian [or else!] isn’t going to cut it. Telling them follow these rules with no rhyme or reason, will not lead to a life where they are directed by God. Thinking that over-controlling them will keep them from sin is wrong, in fact it will actually open many of them to more open rebellion. You must lead by example and with love. Once your child is of age, while you may seek to instruct and influence, their decisions are to be their own.

What happens when all life life long conditioning takes precedent, and extreme sheltering and dependence come out in wash? One odd aspect of these movements seems to take sheltering the young people blocking their eyes, or ears, or brains from even knowing anything that happens in the outside world. Here is an example of a book written for Dominionist parents.

8 The Concept of Sheltering 103
9 The Biblical Basis of Sheltering 115
10 Our Example and Instruction
As Parents 129
11 Sheltering from the Negative Influences of Things 139
12 Sheltering from Negative Influences of People 151
13 Sheltering from Other
Negative Influences 169
14 The Reality of Our
Sheltering Choices 187

Do they really expect their children to be able to cope with the world, hiding them from everything. I can understand guarding your child’s eyes and ears from things they are not ready for, violence, sex on TV and movies, and protecting them from things that would harm them even physically AND emotionally, but there is a line where over-protection gets carried away and where it becomes about locking that child’s mind up. Untested “Christianity” remains facile, if they do not even know the existence of other religions or the deceptions people can fall into, if they are left ignorant on purpose. What happens to a Christian child who has never encountered or learned about the “outside” world at all even to be ready for it? It’s like the Christian Dominionist world took secular helicopter parenting and raised it a few notches.

One thing I want to inform here, does Jesus Christ teach total obedience to parents or sheltering by parents when he states this?

Mat 10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

Many out there will be at variance with relatives, parents, fathers, in obeying Jesus Christ. I dare say that will apply to the Dominionist and Patriarchy strands of false religion as well as leaving any other cult a grown child may have been raised in.

As I have written The Patriarchy movement with its extreme authoritarianism is an extreme example of this, where even a “Stay At Home Daughter” 30 year old daughter is taught she has to have every move approved of by the father she still lives with and where she must obey like a 10 year old.

 

You also see the weird Purity Balls, where daughters are instructed to swear their virginity to their fathers. To be frank while parents should teach their daughters to save sex for marriage and keep themselves pure, this all smacks of severe unnecessary regulation and distrust of those same daughters to make the right decision. It also crosses boundaries that should not be crossed. That should be between them and God when they are adults, and hopefully they will make the right biblical decisions. Why is there a trend in some circles of “Dominionist Christianity” where fathers will be choosing or at least having to approve these girl’s future husbands? How come purity is never spoken of regarding the young men? One odd trend in purity circles and one saw it with the Duggars oldest son and wife to be, is the extreme of teaching daughters they cannot even kiss a fiance’ and must wait til the wedding day. Years ago when I was a liberal UU, while the Handmaiden’s Tale was a wicked book, that promoted abortion in inverse, this set up seems to follow the story line of an extreme patriarchial theocratic society.

Do these “Christians” even realize they are following in fundamentalist Islam’s footsteps. What next a bride price and negotiating between fathers for each marriage? What about having the teachings of Christianity where the Holy Spirit leads a daughter to make the right decisions instead of having it forced upon them via supervision by her father? Again it makes everything about authority. Even if society is disgustingly debauched and you fear for your daughter, you do not impose such things upon then. The odd statement within the video, “The father is everything” is just more of that backwards promotion of patriarchy. Sadly people who have rightly tired of the moral decay of society are being seduced into these programs.

But then you see the popularity of the Pearls whose program focuses on training children to submit to authority [or else! in many cases] and it really makes you start to wonder. The Pearls whose writings are used in many conservative and fundametnalist Christian circles, do advocate ‘training”, and “harsh punishment” for children. Bill Gothard as well focuses on ‘character training” and “obedience drills” where children sing the praises of obedience and to announce they are grateful for the opportunity to follow orders:
and

Gothard teaches in his seminars that obedience brings godliness. Authority figures – the father, the politician, the minister, and the boss – are to be obeyed as if Christ were giving the orders. Gothard’s ideas of family life are rigid, as wives are taught to be submissive and men are encouraged to be the absolute head of the household. Quotes from the Bible are used as backup to his assertions. The biblical justification for always being subservient to the boss comes from 1 Peter 2:18: “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear.”

Authority figures, according to Gothard, are on a higher spiritual plain than ordinary folk, and obeying them will help one get closer to God. He tells his followers that they are to obey everything, except orders to do “evil.” If your boss is dead wrong, Gothard says it’s OK to make a “Godly appeal” to him, but if the appeal is refused, the worker must live with it.

Blind obedience to authority figures is never a good thing. It is scary to me that Gothard teaches that authority figures have more moral claim and are on a higher level, it reminds me of Catholicism where we were taught that clergy and the “religious” were better people and we were to obey them. Even the extreme emphasis on “virginity” and “purity” is nothing new to me since even in the Catholic church, as I was educated by nuns, this was a constant theme. These are good things in themselves but can be abused. Now blind obedience has infested the evangelical world. This isn’t the only Catholic saint, who demanded blind obedience to religious authority. It is a theme of every cult out there.

Obey blindly , that is, without asking reasons. Be careful, then, never to examine the directions of your confessor….In a word, keep before your eyes this great rule, that in obeying your confessor you obey God. Force yourself then, to obey him in spite of all fears. And be persuaded that if you are not obedient to him it will be impossible for you to go on well; but if you obey him you are secure. But you say, if I am damned in consequence of obeying my confessor, who will rescue me from hell? What you say is impossible.” St. Alphonsus De Liguori, True Spouse of Christ, p 352, Benziger Brothers, NY.

See how that works? One thing with all this blind obedience that is advocated, is the authority of priests, popes, well in this case evangelical preachers, and teachers and religious figures, and even your own biological father in the case of patriarchy is elevated to the extreme. This would include the politicians and other “leaders” of the world too. What better way to keep people unquestioning sheeple, then by training them from childhood to always obey and if they don’t or they dare to question, that the punishment will be swift, sure and severe?

There is something being advanced in many Dominionist “Christian circles”, where all the NUTURE has been taken out of child-rearing, all the comfort and more. Is there a sociological reason for all the extreme hyper-authoritarian parenting that has taken hold among Dominionism and related partriarchy groups? I realize some are well meaning people who are getting sucked into this stuff, the changes in this world are scary, the moral decay the rot, they know too many young adults falling into the abyss of drugs, sexual debauchery, and rejecting moral values, but squeezing the hand of parental control to super-rigid extents is no answer too. It makes one wonder. I remember reading books on German history that spoke of the years before Hitler, where authoritarian parenting was cultural and it makes one wonder how it could be used to make for a passive populace. As I have written on this blog, some do not see the luciferian big picture, but for this “child-rearing” changes, to me there is one. It is about CONTROL and about the waxing cold of the last days, where natural affection and love, are canceled out.

Rom 1:31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

Most of the “Christians” being led into these child-rearing methods are unknowing people, they want to do the “right thing” they want to protect their children from harm, drugs, teen pregnancy, witchcraft, alcoholism, but sadly they are being led down yet another false rabbit trail, and it is not just the very extremes of the Dominionist Quiverful Patriarchy crowd, it’s infested itself everywhere into American society from James Dobson to the high schools with their guards at the front door.

One sees the “tough love”, “keep the young people under control” ethos all over the place, there are ‘fundamentalist” colleges that treat 20 year old young adults like children, and ‘ground’ them or what they call “campus” them for a variety of offenses, some rather small. Some have rules where no young woman can leave the campus without chaperones or permission. What is astonishing about this, is how will such a young woman learn to survive in today’s world when she is graduated from that college? Husbands work and cannot accompany them everywhere they go in the future. If behavior is not self-directed from the inside, but only imposed by strict forces from the outside, a child or teen does not mature and grow normally.

Rome had its schools of evil where children were beaten, abused and even put to work such as in the Magdalene laundries, but it’s scary when you see in the news so many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians schools seeming to go that way. I ran across this recently and was horrified.

Anyone who runs a school like this is a definite wolf. There is no Christian love in beating, abusing and humiliating children to submit to your will. Those who think they can turn their children into loving, obedient Christians via FORCE have already lost the plot. Ever wonder why so many of these schools keep popping up? Why do they all seem run by fanatical mad tyrants? One can see the endless lists, Hephzibah House the Roloff Homes and many more. Why is so much of this happening?

A very likely spiritual outcome is they could turn those children into die-hard atheists for life, as the main example of “Christianity” they see includes beatings, abuse and an endless list of draconian rules even for the ones who are not out and out physically abused.

Some years ago, on a message board, I even saw a couple of “Christians” defend this story where a girl was tied to a truck at a boot camp and dragged. They acted like she deserved what happened to her. No Christian love there. That is one of the times I have been most upset dealing with false Christians online. To defend such a thing was sickening. This girl could have been killed.

A teenage girl attending a Christian “boot camp” in Texas was allegedly tied to a van and dragged along the ground after falling behind during a morning run.

Police said yesterday that a pastor and camp counsellor [sic] were arrested on aggravated assault charges after the 15-year-old girl suffered injuries at the Faith Outreach Centre in a suburb of San Antonio.

A police spokesman said the incident took place in June and was reported to police by the mother of the girl after she was hospitalised for unspecified injuries.

Charles Flowers, a senior pastor, and Stephanie Bassitt, a counsellor, were arrested on Friday.

The girl, who has not been named, was apparently participating in a running exercise at the military-style Love Demonstrated Ministries camp when she became tired.

Why are “Christians” running schools that are like military camps and treating young girls the same like young men? Of course even the regular military has laws against what happened to that girl. Isn’t it ironic that those who claim to care about biblical femininity and promote “patriarchy” set up schools and institutions that hold expectations for young women that match those for the most hard core Marine?

Many do not know about the whole “troubled teen” industry where wealthy parents send supposedly out of control teens to out of country or out of state wilderness and other schools where boot camp and austere living are promoted and extreme punishments for the smallest infractions are given. Many of these schools claim they are “Christian”. One wonders how much deep “mind control” and other evil agendas are tied to these places given their sometimes out and out torture of young people. How much of this is about experiments for control of the populace and the planned totalitarianism? After all if you break down the young people under extreme oppressive authority what will they become? Even the public schools have rapidly changed to this sort of thing: “Life in US Public Schools is Just Like Prison”.

See here

The school has a current enrollment of 63 children, placed in the school by parents in an effort to remedy behavior problems. New Horizon uses a boot-camp atmosphere to place children onto what school officials believe to be the right road for life.

A handful of protesters showed at a Founder’s Day celebration this month at the Marion campus.

“We want people to ask us about our experiences in the program, educate those who didn’t know about the program and let students see that we are rooting for them,” said Lisa Brown Wilbur of New Castle as she held a sign reading “Stop the Abuse.”

The protesters painted a picture of complete dictation, a life completely monitored by counselors.

And yes in those places their lives are totally controlled and monitored. Many of these schools including secular ones, are full of human rights violations, extreme punishments, like withholding food and sleep and hours of hard labor, and oppressive behavior modification methods.

This is just one of the many examples among many. Some young people have lost their lives in the worse places. These schools grew numerous in the 80s but kept expanding in the 90s. Many parents were told this was the best way to deal with their troubled teens. In some circles, harsh punishment was promoted for every problem a young person was to face, strip their room clean of every item except the mattress, send them off to “wilderness camps” or “bootcamps” where intense physical exercise and brutality ruled. Young adults who encountered health problems or could not take the strain, have died at these places.

The “or else” reached an alarming level in the wilderness programs where kids have actually died as a result of untrained staff taking them to potentially dangerous wilderness areas. The most notorious case was that of Aaron Bacon. As a small child, Aaron was the kind of boy who brought food to the homeless and let them take showers in the guesthouse. “II sat him down and said, ‘Look, you can’t do that,'” his mother,Sally recalls. “‘We don’t know if these people will harm you.’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Mom, we have a house. We have love. We have each other. They don’t have anything and I won’t stop.'”7

In high school, Aaron began taking drugs. His mother put him in North Star Expeditions. She expected him to be “out there with God and Nature and himself writing.” The program gave Aaron a pair of cheap boots that were too small, a sleeping bag and a backpack. He was never given warm enough clothing. A few days later, he developed the first symptoms of intestinal problams. The staff told Aaron that “all counselors, therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists are quacks.8 The campers had to learn how to make a fire with a native bow drill technique and were not allowed to cook their food until they learned. Already hungry because most of the food, such as lentils and rice, was inedible if it wasn’t cooked, they were put on a two-day fast. He had trouble from the very start, developing blisters in his too-tight boots, staggering and falling from the combined weight of his backpack and lack of food. The worst thing was the ulcer that began on the first day and developed until it became perforated (intestinal fluids leaking into his abdominal cavity, causing peritoritus).

Often desperate parents with drug addicted children with nowhere else to turn, sadly are exploited by such places.

Years ago I read a book called Jesus Land.
It’s a autobiography by a woman who had abusive parents who sent her to one of these schools. They put forth themselves as Christians, but seem to be psychopaths, the father even breaks one of her adopted brothers arms in a fit of anger. In this case they attend an ultra-strict Calvinist church, but the story of how they are sent to this school overseas that is so strict, they enforce endless stupid rules, force them to live a dangerous third world lifestyle, with starvation and over-work included. They also prevent the sister and brother from having contact with each other. The school is the zenith of totalitarian rule, and control. Thankfully they both escape, but barely.

“For Julia Scheeres and her adopted brother David, “Jesus Land” stretched from their parents’ fundamentalist home, past the hostilities of high school, and deep into a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. For these two teenagers – brother and sister, black and white – the 1980’s were a trial by fire.” “In this memoir, Scheeres takes us from the familiar Midwest, a land of cottonwood trees and trailer parks, to a place beyond her imagining. At home, the Scheeres kids must endure the usual trials of adolescence – high-school hormones, incessant bullying, and the deep-seated restlessness of social misfits everywhere – under the shadow of virulent racism neither knows how to contend with. When they start to crack (or fight back), they are packed off to Escuela Caribe.” This brutal, prison-like “Christian boot camp” demands that its inhabitants repent for their sins – sins that few of them are aware of having committed”

Things are getting rather bad out there.

I believe the oppression of youth, comes as a natural outcome of the false DOMINIONIST teachings, they are definitely connected. if everything is about control, authority, oppression, coloring in between the lines for society, wouldn’t it influence the families who are in these churches? Wouldn’t it influence the nature of these so called “Christian” schools for troubled youth? In a burgeoning police state, the heavy hand of authority on all levels is emphasized more and more. Children are raised with submission to authority as the first thing. Fascism married to a false “Christianity” that emphasizes extreme authoritarianism and here you see the evil fruits for the young people.

The Virgin Daughters Documentary

Oh my.  I came out of extreme pentecostalism and it’s horrifying view of Dominionism, only to be smacked on the other cheek with Dominionism coming straight out of the New Calvinist/Gospel Coalition/Integrated Church Movement.  All of these groups seem to be merging into this purity, live in the past, Calvin’s Geneva Part 2 soup that has me wanting to run and hide from every Church in America.  It was preachers like Paul Washer and John MacArthur who helped me understand the Truth of the Scriptures in light of anything goes Pentecostalism.  Unfortunately, these very same teachers that claim to teach strictly from the Scriptures, are producing the same rotten, unbiblical fruit that I had once plucked from the koo-koo tree.  Only now they wrap themselves in the cloak of “Modern Day Reformers”. 

I have been there.  I see where this crazy train is going.  Just as I used to get freaked out in the pews when I heard mention of “Gifts of the Spirit, as evidenced by speaking in tongues”, I now cringe when I hear the words “Wives be Intimate, Daughters pledge to your Fathers…”  It’s just creepy.  It’s not Biblical.  Guess what Calvinista Popes?  Let the Holy Spirit guide the bedrooms of the Christian households.  That’s right, the Holy Spirit still teaches in all things, we don’t need your “holy” interpretations or additional Reformed Papal decrees.  Thank you.

If I sound angry it’s because I am.  I went from one extreme of the Christian faith to the other, only to find myself caught up in a web of deceit by power hungry wolves.  I will start with this documentary called, “The Virgin Daughters” and we will move on into the topic of Dominionism in my next post.  If it feels creepy, that’s because it is.  It’s called emotional incest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fZyuLtH4X4

Let Him Hear

I am reposting this article that I had originally posted in October of 2010 in light of the vitriolic debates I am hearing in Christian circles over the current election. 

Patriotism: An Anabaptist Perspective

By Frank L. Reed

Note from Kari:  Whether we agree or disagree with everything Elder Reed has written in this article, I found some very profound insights on the Anabaptist position on our role as “citizens” in light of the Word of God.    Just some things to ponder.

The United States of America is the greatest nation in the world. It is likely the greatest nation that will ever be in the world. The United States of America has provided more freedom and more opportunity for more people–than any nation ever has. Untold millions of people of all races and religions have found refuge at these “golden shores.” America has fulfilled the dreams of millions of individuals. In America, as nowhere else…

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Beverley Anne McGuyer Moore 03/24/1948 – 04/18/2012

 

Momma and Daddy, Portland, Maine, Sept 2011

 

Momma passed away on April 18, 2012, less than 3 months from her initial diagnosis.  I just wanted to thank each and every one of you for your prayers and support.  You held me up in prayer, when I was broken, merely functioning on a spiritual autopilot if you will.  The Lord, Our God, is good! 

I know that God took Momma for His own glory, but I miss her.  I miss her terribly.  I miss our fieldtrips that we took every few months.  She was honestly my best friend.  From her death  until August 8th, I was unable to cry.  I was still pretty much shocked over the whole thing.   August 8th was my 41st birthday and I started to cry.  I cried nonstop for 2 weeks.  The tears are beginning to dry up now and wonderful memories are beginning to erase the horror of watching Momma suffer from such an awful disease. 

When Momma found out she was dying, all she would talk about was how she didn’t do enough to please God.  He was never going to accept her because of the things that she had done in her past.  That is exactly what she was taught.  That is what I was taught.  Faith plus works.  You have to earn your salvation.  Christ is not sufficient.  He is not enough to save. 

All of momma’s “Christian” brothers and sisters stopped by with prayer cloths, annoiting oils and constantly chirpped away about how “Sister B is faithful, God has to heal her because of all of the good works that she does for Him.”  When they saw that she wasn’t getting better, they would insist on calling in this healer or that to annoint her and pray over her. They believed certain men could save her.  They thought maybe she had unconfessed sin in her life.  She was causing God not to heal her.  It is the worst kind of bondage.  In the last 2 weeks of her life, she no longer wanted to hear God’s Word.  No hymns, no sermons, no Bible. 

You have to understand, Momma devoted her life to pleasing the Lord.  She had entire neighborhoods that she ministered to.  To go from every breath being about Jesus, to pushing Him out was devestating.  Instead, she was constantly making us bring her her jewelry, looking it up on the internet to see it’s worth, materialism of the worst kind.  She would remind my sister and I constantly that we were not in her will.  It was all about money.  She was cruel and told us that she never loved us.  I pray it was just the cancer in her brain.  Daddy thinks that she lost her faith.  I think that she never had saving faith. 

In her last week, she became unable to talk.  She could only mumble and went in and out of consiousness.  My Sister and I picked up her Bible, stayed by her side in 12 hour shifts and we read her Romans and John day and night.  There was clearly a spiritual battle raging for her soul.  She would at times act as if she were seeing things in the room that terrified her and things that made her peaceful.  She went 7 days with no food or water.  The Lord had a work to do with her.  I believe that He revealed Himself to her in all of His glory in those last days.  She had always loved the Lord, she just had never been preached the Gospel before.  She was taught another Jesus and another Gospel.  I believe that in her last days God’s Word pierced her soul.  I believe that she is serving Our King right now, in the way that she had always wanted to.

We were blessed in that the Lord provided us time to share His Word with Momma.  Many others that we know or love, may die without any warning.  Have we shared our faith with them?  Please think on those you know today who have a heart for Jesus, but are lost in the maze of desperately trying to earn their salvation.  There are well over 1 billion catholics and almost 300 million  pentecostals in this world trying to work their way into Heaven.  Share the Gospel with them and allow them to enter into His rest.  The work is complete.  It was done 2012 years ago on an old rugged cross. 

May our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ bless you and your households today and everyday.  Amen.

When Christian Music is Beautiful

I have been so lost for so long.  I didn’t know how to deal with some of my favorite pastors being exposed as legalists, patriarchal, thieves and wolves.  It’s OK, I’ve been there before and I learned to trust in Jesus Christ, the One who cannot lie, alone.  I had blog block, didn’t have a clue what to post.  Then bam, on January 24th, my momma calls me from her MRI and says, “Kari, the neurologist just told me I have cancer all over my brain” and my world turned upside down.  Not that I struggled with God over this.  In fact, the first thing I did, as I always do when something dramatic happens, was go to my knees and gave my Precious Savior thanks for momma’s brain cancer.  I trust in Him.  I know, without a shadow of doubt, that He does not allow anything to happen to any of His children, without His purpose and Glory in it.

Mom is on Hospice now, had a week of extreme whole brain radiation and also on some of the tumors in her spine.  The radiation pretty much wiped her brain out, so she is really just a shell.  They say, she may return clear headed to say goodbye right before she goes.  All in God’s time, though.

Anyways, I have been finding comfort in music lately.  I mean, I can’t stand most CCM and don’t even get me started on how every other song is by that Catholic, Matt Maher.  I have even read that he tours with Michael W. Smith and for last half hour of the show, they invite the crowd to worship the eucharist.  I digress, that is a topic for another day.  Anyhoo, I love to sing to Jesus and I was knocked out by the solid theology in the lyrics of Third Day songs.  Especially their new song, Trust in Jesus.  They are listed below.  I pray for them, because millions of Christians get their theology from the less than theologically accurate CCM.  I consider them CCM Missionaries and the Lord will bless them abundantly.  Anyway, I just love this song, Thief, and thought you might want to sing it with me.

May the Grace, Joy and Peace of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, be with you always, my beautiful friends.

Psalm 16 With Commentary from Charles Spurgeon

Psalm 16 (KJV)

¹Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust.

²O my soul, thou hast said unto the LORD, Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee;

³But to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight.

⁴Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god: their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips.

⁵The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot.

⁶The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.

⁷I will bless the LORD, who hath given me counsel: my reins also instruct me in the night seasons.

⁸I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

⁹Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.

¹⁰For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

¹¹Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

TITLE. MICHTAM OF DAVID. This is usually understood to mean
THE GOLDEN PSALM, and such a title is most appropriate, for the matter is as
the most fine gold. Ainsworth calls it “David’s jewel, or notable song.” Dr.
Hawker, who is always alive to passages full of savour, devoutly cries, “Some
have rendered it precious, others golden, and others, precious
jewel; and as the Holy Ghost, by the apostles Peter and Paul, hath shown us
that it is all about the Lord Jesus Christ, what is here said of him is
precious, is golden, is a jewel indeed!” We have not met with the term
Michtam before, but if spared to write upon Psalms 56, 57, 58, 59, and 60, we
shall see it again, and shall observe that like the present these psalms,
although they begin with prayer, and imply trouble, abound in holy confidence
and close with songs of assurance as to ultimate safety and joy. Dr. Alexander,
whose notes are peculiarly valuable, thinks that the word is most probably a
simple derivative of a word signifying to hide, and signifies a secret or
mystery, and indicates the depth of doctrinal and spiritual import in these
sacred compositions. If this be the true interpretation it well accords with the
other, and when the two are put together, they make up a name which every reader
will remember, and which will bring the precious subject at once to mind.
THE PSALM OF THE PRECIOUS SECRET.

SUBJECT. We are not left to human interpreters for the key to this golden
mystery, for, speaking by the Holy Ghost, Peter tells us, “David speaketh
concerning HIM.” (Acts 2:25.) Further on in his memorable sermon he said,
“Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he
is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. Therefore
being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the
fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on
his throne; he seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ,
that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.”
(Acts 2:29-31.) Nor is this our only guide, for the apostle Paul, led by the
same infallible inspiration, quotes from this psalm, and testifies that David
wrote of the man through whom is preached unto us the forgiveness of sins. (Acts
13:35-38.) It has been the usual plan of commentators to apply the psalm both to
David, to the saints, and to the Lord Jesus, but we will venture to believe that
in it “Christ is all;” since in the ninth and tenth verses, like the
apostles on the mount, we can see “no man but Jesus only.”

DIVISION. The whole is so compact that it is difficult to draw sharp lines
of division. It may suffice to note our Lord’s prayer of faith, verse 1, avowal
of faith in Jehovah alone, 2, 3, 4, 5, the contentment of his faith in the
present, 6, 7, and the joyous confidence of his faith for the future (8,
11).

 

---

EXPOSITIONVerse 1. “Preserve me,” keep, or
save me, or as Horsley thinks, “guard me,” even as bodyguards
surround their monarch, or as shepherds protect their flocks. Tempted in all
points like as we are, the manhood of Jesus needed to be preserved from the
power of evil; and though in itself pure, the Lord Jesus did not confide in that
purity of nature, but as an example to his followers, looked to the Lord, his
God, for preservation. One of the great names of God is “the Preserver of men,”
(Job 7:20,) and this gracious office the Father exercised towards our Mediator
and Representative. It had been promised to the Lord Jesus in express words,
that he should be preserved, Isaiah 49:7, 8. “Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer
of Israel and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation
abhorreth, I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people.”
This promise was to the letter fulfilled, both by providential deliverance and
sustaining power, in the case of our Lord. Being preserved himself, he is able
to restore the preserved of Israel, for we are “preserved in Christ Jesus and
called.” As one with him, the elect were preserved in his preservation, and we
may view this mediatorial supplication as the petition of the Great High Priest
for all those who are in him. The intercession recorded in John 17 is but an
amplification of this cry, “Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom
thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.” When he says,
“preserve me,” he means his members, his mystical body, himself, and all in him.
But while we rejoice in the fact that the Lord Jesus used this prayer for his
members, we must not forget that he employed it most surely for himself; he had
so emptied himself, and so truly taken upon him the form of a servant, that as
man he needed divine keeping even as we do, and often cried unto the strong for
strength. Frequently on the mountain-top he breathed forth this desire, and on
one occasion in almost the same words, he publicly prayed, “Father, save me from
this hour.” (John 12:27.) If Jesus looked out of himself for protection, how
much more must we, his erring followers, do so!
“O God.” The word for God here used is EL (Heb.),
by which name the Lord Jesus, when under a sense of great weakness, as for
instance when upon the cross, was wont to address the Mighty God, the Omnipotent
Helper of his people. We, too, may turn to El, the Omnipotent One, in all
hours of peril, with the confidence that he who heard the strong crying and
tears of our faithful High Priest, is both able and willing to bless us in him.
It is well to study the name and character of God, so that in our straits we may
know how and by what title to address our Father who is in heaven.
“For in thee do I put my trust,” or,
I have taken shelter in thee. As chickens run beneath the hen, so do I
betake myself to thee. Thou art my great overshadowing Protector, and I have
taken refuge beneath thy strength. This is a potent argument in pleading, and
our Lord knew not only how to use it with God, but how to yield to its
power when wielded by others upon himself. “According to thy faith be it done
unto thee,” is a great rule of heaven in dispensing favour, and when we can
sincerely declare that we exercise faith in the Mighty God with regard to the
mercy which we seek, we may rest assured that our plea will prevail. Faith, like
the sword of Saul, never returns empty; it overcomes heaven when held in the
hand of prayer. As the Saviour prayed, so let us pray, and as he became more
than a conqueror, so shall we also through him; let us when buffeted by storms
right bravely cry to the Lord as he did, “in thee do I put my trust.”

Verse 2. “O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord.”
In his inmost heart the Lord Jesus bowed himself to do service to his Heavenly
Father, and before the throne of Jehovah his soul vowed allegiance to the Lord
for our sakes. We are like him when our soul, truly and constantly in the
presence of the heart-searching God, declares her full consent to the rule and
government of the Infinite Jehovah, saying, “Thou art my Lord.” To avow this
with the lip is little, but for the soul to say it, especially in times
of trial, is a gracious evidence of spiritual health; to profess it before men
is a small matter, but to declare it before Jehovah himself is of far more
consequence. This sentence may also be viewed as the utterance of appropriating
faith, laying hold upon the Lord by personal covenant and enjoyment; in this
sense may it be our daily song in the house of our pilgrimage.
“My goodness extendeth not to thee.”
The work of our Lord Jesus was not needful on account of any necessity in the
Divine Being. Jehovah would have been inconceivably glorious had the human race
perished, and had no atonement been offered. Although the life-work and
death-agony of the Son did reflect unparalleled lustre upon every attribute of
God, yet the Most Blessed and Infinitely Happy God stood in no need of the
obedience and death of his Son; it was for our sakes that the work of redemption
was undertaken, and not because of any lack or want on the part of the Most
High. How modestly does the Saviour here estimate his own goodness! What
overwhelming reasons have we for imitating his humility! “If thou be righteous,
what givest thou him? or what receiveth he of thine hand?” (Job 35:7.)

Verse 3. “But to the saints that are in the earth.” These sanctified
ones, although still upon the earth, partake of the results of Jesus’
mediatorial work, and by his goodness are made what they are. The peculiar
people, zealous for good works, and hallowed to sacred service, are arrayed in
the Saviour’s righteousness and washed in his blood, and so receive of the
goodness treasured up in him; these are the persons who are profited by the work
of the man Christ Jesus; but that work added nothing to the nature, virtue, or
happiness of God, who is blessed for evermore. How much more forcibly is this
true of us, poor unworthy servants not fit to be mentioned in comparison with
the faithful Son of God! Our hope must ever be that haply some poor child of God
may be served by us, for the Great Father can never need our aid. Well may we
sing the verses of Dr. Watts:

“Oft have my heart and tongue confess’d
How empty and how poor I
am;
My praise can never make thee blest,
Nor add new glories to thy
name.
Yet, Lord, thy saints on earth may reap
Some profit by the good we
do;
These are the company I keep,
These are the choicest friends I
know.”Poor believers are God’s receivers,
and have a warrant from the Crown to receive the revenue of our offerings in the
King’s name. Saints departed we cannot bless; even prayer for them is of no
service; but while they are here we should practically prove our love to them,
even as our Master did, for they are the excellent of the earth. Despite
their infirmities, their Lord thinks highly of them, and reckons them to be as
nobles among men. The title of “His Excellency” more properly belongs to the
meanest saint than to the greatest governor. The true aristocracy are believers
in Jesus. They are the only Right Honourables. Stars and garters are poor
distinctions compared with the graces of the Spirit. He who knows them best says
of them, “in whom is all my delight.” They are his Hephzibah and his land
Beulah, and before all worlds his delights were with these chosen sons of men.
Their own opinion of themselves is far other than their Beloved’s opinion of
them; they count themselves to be less than nothing, yet he makes much of them,
and sets his heart towards them. What wonders the eyes of Divine Love can see
where the Hands of Infinite Power have been graciously at work. It was this
quicksighted affection which led Jesus to see in us a recompense for all his
agony, and sustained him under all his sufferings by the joy of redeeming us
from going down into the pit.

Verse 4. The same loving heart which opens towards the chosen people is fast
closed against those who continue in their rebellion against God. Jesus hates
all wickedness, and especially the high crime of idolatry. The text while it
shows our Lord’s abhorrence of sin, shows also the sinner’s greediness after it.
Professed believers are often slow towards the true Lord, but sinners “hasten
after another god.” They run like madmen where we creep like snails. Let
their zeal rebuke our tardiness. Yet theirs is a case in which the more they
haste the worse they speed, for their sorrows are multiplied by their
diligence in multiplying their sins. Matthew Henry pithily says, “They that
multiply gods multiply griefs to themselves; for whosoever thinks one god too
little, will find two too many, and yet hundreds not enough.” The cruelties and
hardships which men endure for their false gods is wonderful to contemplate; our
missionary reports are a noteworthy comment on this passage; but perhaps our own
experience is an equally vivid exposition; for when we have given our heart to
idols, sooner or later we have had to smart for it. Near the roots of our
self-love all our sorrows lie, and when that idol is overthrown, the sting is
gone from grief. Moses broke the golden calf and ground it to powder, and cast
it into the water of which he made Israel to drink, and so shall our cherished
idols become bitter portions for us, unless we at once forsake them. Our Lord
had no selfishness; he served but one Lord, and served him only. As for those
who turn aside from Jehovah, he was separate from them, bearing their reproach
without the camp. Sin and the Saviour had no communion. He came to destroy, not
to patronize or be allied with the works of the devil. Hence he refused the
testimony of unclean spirits as to his divinity, for in nothing would he have
fellowship with darkness. We should be careful above measure not to connect
ourselves in the remotest degree with falsehood in religion; even the most
solemn of Popish rites we must abhor. “Their drink offerings of blood will I
not offer.” The old proverb says, “It is not safe to eat at the devil’s
mess, though the spoon be never so long.” The mere mentioning of ill names it
were well to avoid,—“nor take up their names into my lips.” If we allow
poison upon the lip, it may ere long penetrate to the inwards, and it is well to
keep out of the mouth that which we would shut out from the heart. If the church
would enjoy union with Christ, she must break all the bonds of impiety, and keep
herself pure from all the pollutions of carnal will-worship, which now pollute
the service of God. Some professors are guilty of great sin in remaining in the
communion of Popish churches, where God is as much dishonoured as in Rome
herself, only in a more crafty manner.

Verse 5. “The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup.”
With what confidence and bounding joy does Jesus turn to Jehovah, whom his soul
possessed and delighted in! Content beyond measure with his portion in the Lord
his God, he had not a single desire with which to hunt after other gods; his cup
was full, and his heart was full too; even in his sorest sorrows he still laid
hold with both his hands upon his Father, crying, “My God, my God;” he had not
so much as a thought of falling down to worship the prince of this world,
although tempted with an “all these will I give thee.” We, too, can make our
boast in the Lord; he is the meat and the drink of our souls. He is our portion,
supplying all our necessities, and our cup yielding royal luxuries; our cup in
this life, and our inheritance in the life to come. As children of the Father
who is in heaven, we inherit, by virtue of our joint heirship with Jesus, all
the riches of the covenant of grace; and the portion which falls to us sets upon
our table the bread of heaven and the new wine of the kingdom. Who would not be
satisfied with such dainty diet? Our shallow cup of sorrow we may well drain
with resignation, since the deep cup of love stands side by side with it, and
will never be empty. “Thou maintainest my lot.” Some tenants have a
covenant in their leases that they themselves shall maintain and uphold, but in
our case Jehovah himself maintains our lot. Our Lord Jesus delighted in this
truth, that the Father was on his side, and would maintain his right against all
the wrongs of men. He knew that his elect would be reserved for him, and that
almighty power would preserve them as his lot and reward for ever. Let us also
be glad, because the Judge of all the earth will vindicate our righteous cause.

Verse 6. Jesus found the way of obedience to lead into “pleasant
places.” Notwithstanding all the sorrows which marred his countenance, he
exclaimed, “Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight
to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.” It may seem strange,
but while no other man was ever so thoroughly acquainted with grief, it is our
belief that no other man ever experienced so much joy and delight in service,
for no other served so faithfully and with such great results in view as his
recompense of reward. The joy which was set before him must have sent some of
its beams of splendour a-down the rugged places where he endured the cross,
despising the shame, and must have made them in some respects pleasant places to
the generous heart of the Redeemer. At any rate, we know that Jesus was well
content with the blood-bought portion which the lines of electing love marked
off as his spoil with the strong and his portion with the great. Therein he
solaced himself on earth, and delights himself in heaven; and he asks no more
“GOODLY HERITAGE” than that his own beloved may be with him where he is and
behold his glory. All the saints can use the language of this verse, and the
more thoroughly they can enter into its contented, grateful, joyful spirit the
better for themselves, and the more glorious to their God. Our Lord was poorer
than we are, for he had not where to lay his head, and yet when he mentioned his
poverty he never used a word of murmuring; discontented spirits are as unlike
Jesus as the croaking raven is unlike the cooing dove. Martyrs have been happy
in dungeons. “From the delectable orchard of the Leonine prison the Italian
martyr dated his letter, and the presence of God made the gridiron of Laurence
pleasant to him.” Mr. Greenham was bold enough to say, “They never felt God’s
love, or tasted forgiveness of sin, who are discontented.” Some divines think
that discontent was the first sin, the rock which wrecked our race in paradise;
certainly there can be no paradise where this evil spirit has power, its slime
will poison all the flowers of the garden.

Verse 7. “I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel.” Praise as
well as prayer was presented to the Father by our Lord Jesus, and we are not
truly his followers unless our resolve be, “I will bless the Lord.” Jesus is
called Wonderful, Counsellor, but as man he spake not of himself, but as his
Father had taught him. Read in confirmation of this, John 7:16; 8:28; and 12:49,
50; and the prophecy concerning him in Isaiah 11:2, 3. It was our Redeemer’s
wont to repair to his Father for direction, and having received it, he blessed
him for giving him counsel. It would be well for us if we would follow his
example of lowliness, cease from trusting in our own understanding, and seek to
be guided by the Spirit of God. “My reins also instruct me in the night
seasons.” By the reins understand the inner man, the affections and
feelings. The communion of the soul with God brings to it an inner spiritual
wisdom which in still seasons is revealed to itself. Our Redeemer spent many
nights alone upon the mountain, and we may readily conceive that together with
his fellowship with heaven, he carried on a profitable commerce with himself;
reviewing his experience, forecasting his work, and considering his position.
Great generals fight their battles in their own mind long before the trumpet
sounds, and so did our Lord win our battle on his knees before he gained it on
the cross. It is a gracious habit after taking counsel from above to take
counsel within. Wise men see more with their eyes shut by night than fools can
see by day with their eyes open. He who learns from God and so gets the seed,
will soon find wisdom within himself growing in the garden of his soul; “Thine
ears shall hear a voice behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it,
when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left.” The night season
which the sinner chooses for his sins is the hallowed hour of quiet when
believers hear the soft still voices of heaven, and of the heavenly life within
themselves.

Verse 8. The fear of death at one time cast its dark shadow over the soul of
the Redeemer, and we read that, “he was heard in that he feared.” There appeared
unto him an angel, strengthening him; perhaps the heavenly messenger reassured
him of his glorious resurrection as his people’s surety, and of the eternal joy
into which he should admit the flock redeemed by blood. Then hope shone full
upon our Lord’s soul, and, as recorded in these verses, he surveyed the future
with holy confidence because he had a continued eye to Jehovah, and enjoyed his
perpetual presence. He felt that, thus sustained, he could never be driven from
his life’s grand design; nor was he, for he stayed not his hand till he could
say, “It is finished.” What an infinite mercy was this for us! In this
immovableness, caused by simple faith in the divine help, Jesus is to be viewed
as our exemplar; to recognize the presence of the Lord is the duty of every
believer; “I have set the Lord always before me;” and to trust the
Lord as our champion and guard is the privilege of every saint; “because he
is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” The apostle translates this
passage, “I foresaw the Lord always before my face;” Acts 2:25; the eye of
Jesus’ faith could discern beforehand the continuance of divine support to his
suffering Son, in such a degree that he should never be moved from the
accomplishment of his purpose of redeeming his people. By the power of God at
his right hand he foresaw that he should smite through all who rose up against
him, and on that power he placed the firmest reliance.

Verse 9. He clearly foresaw that he must die, for he speaks of his flesh
resting, and of his soul in the abode of separate spirits; death was full before
his face, or he would not have mentioned corruption; but such was his devout
reliance upon his God, that he sang over the tomb, and rejoiced in vision of the
sepulchre. He knew that the visit of his soul to Sheol, or the invisible world
of disembodied spirits, would be a very short one, and that his body in a very
brief space would leave the grave, uninjured by its sojourn there; all this made
him say, “my heart is glad,” and moved his tongue, the glory of
his frame, to rejoice in God, the strength of his salvation. Oh, for such
holy faith in the prospect of trial and of death! It is the work of faith, not
merely to create a peace which passeth all understanding, but to fill the heart
full of gladness until the tongue, which, as the organ of an intelligent
creature, is our glory, bursts forth in notes of harmonious praise. Faith gives
us living joy, and bestows dying rest. “My flesh also shall rest in
hope.”

Verse 10. Our Lord Jesus was not disappointed in his hope. He declared his
Father’s faithfulness in the words, “thou wilt not leave my soul in
hell,” and that faithfulness was proven on the resurrection morning. Among
the departed and disembodied Jesus was not left; he had believed in the
resurrection, and he received it on the third day, when his body rose in
glorious life, according as he had said in joyous confidence, “neither wilt
thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” Into the outer prison of the
grave his body might go, but into the inner prison of corruption he could not
enter. He who in soul and body was pre-eminently God’s “Holy One,” was loosed
from the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of
it. This is noble encouragement to all the saints; die they must, but rise they
shall, and though in their case they shall see corruption, yet they shall rise
to everlasting life. Christ’s resurrection is the cause, the earnest, the
guarantee, and the emblem of the rising of all his people. Let them, therefore,
go to their graves as to their beds, resting their flesh among the clods as they
now do upon their couches.

“Since Jesus is mine, I’ll not fear undressing,
But gladly put off
these garments of clay;
To die in the Lord is a covenant blessing,
Since
Jesus to glory through death led the way.”Wretched will that man be who, when
the Philistines of death invade his soul, shall find that, like Saul, he is
forsaken of God; but blessed is he who has the Lord at his right hand, for he
shall fear no ill, but shall look forward to an eternity of bliss.

Verse 11. “Thou wilt shew me the path of life.” To Jesus first this
way was shown, for he is the first begotten from the dead, the first-born of
every creature. He himself opened up the way through his own flesh, and then
trod it as the forerunner of his own redeemed. The thought of being made the
path of life to his people, gladdened the soul of Jesus. “In thy presence is
fulness of joy.” Christ being raised from the dead ascended into glory, to
dwell in constant nearness to God, where joy is at its full for ever: the
foresight of this urged him onward in his glorious but grievous toil. To bring
his chosen to eternal happiness was the high ambition which inspired him, and
made him wade through a sea of blood. O God, when a worldling’s mirth has all
expired, for ever with Jesus may we dwell “at thy right hand,” where
“there are pleasures for evermore;” and meanwhile, may we have an earnest
by tasting thy love below. Trapp’s note on the heavenly verse which closes the
Psalm is a sweet morsel, which may serve for a contemplation, and yield a
foretaste of our inheritance. He writes, “Here is as much said as can be, but
words are too weak to utter it. For quality there is in heaven joy and
pleasures; for quantity, a fulness, a torrent whereat they drink without
let or loathing; for constancy, it is at God’s right hand, who is
stronger than all, neither can any take us out of his hand; it is a constant
happiness without intermission: and for perpetuity it is for evermore.
Heaven’s joys are without measure, mixture, or end.”

Juanita Bynum Types in Tongues (via Chrystal at Slaughter of The Sheep)

Juanita Bynum Types in Tongues on Facebook

http://slaughteringthesheep.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/juanita-bynum-types-in-tongues-on-facebook/#comments

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Chrystal Whitt

 

I was sent this news article from the Christian Post by a reader (thanks, Kevin).  The title of the article is “Televangelist Juanita Bynum Raises Brows With ‘Tongues’ Prayer on Facebook.”  As you might imagine, I was intrigued, so I read the article with great interest.

Here is a snippet from the article.

Pentecostal televangelist and self-professed prophetess Juanita Bynum has sparked curiosity among some Internet users and the Christian community for several comments on the minister’s Facebook page where she appears to type “in tongues.”

In a series of posts published on Aug. 17, on one of Bynum’s many Facebook pages, the minister typed messages where it was believed by commenters and critics that the she was praying in tongues.

In the first message time stamped 3:57 p.m., it appeared that Juanita Bynum II, the account holder for the Facebook page, started praying for Zachery Tims, the Florida megachurch minister who was found dead in a New York City hotel room on Aug. 12:

GOD WE PRAY FOR THE DESTINY CHURCH FAMILY….WE PRAY FOR THE STRENGTH OF PASTOR RIVA TIMS….MIGHTY GOD…GIVE US STRENGTH…..WE ARE THE BODY THAT FEELS THIS PAIN…..WE ALL FEEL IT…..COVER THE MINDS OF HIS CHILDREN…GRAB THEM UP IN YOUR ARMS LORD JESUS……BE A COMFORT TO THEM…..YOU ARE THE MANY BREASTED ONE….

The prayer continued in a second post with the same time stamp:

YOU ARE THE ROCK AND THE SHIELD AND THE ANCHOR…….WARD OFF ALL THE VULCHERS…WHO WILL COME FOR GREEDY GAIN AND NOT BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO ARE HURTING IN THAT CHURCH……SEND THEM HELP FATHER…SEND THEM SPIRITUAL HELP THAT WOULD HELP TO HEAL THEM AND RESTORE THEIR LEGS IN YOU GOD!!!!!

Okay, other than the usual charismatic/prophetic language she always uses, there is no tongues in those posts.  However, as Bynum continues, things get much more interesting.  I was afraid these posts may disappear (as things sometimes do on the internet), so I took screenshots of the posts with the supposed tongues in them.  As you can see, for the next three-minutes Bynum gets wound up and continues to type her prayers, only now they’ve got (ahem) tongues in them.  Here we go….

My impression of those tongues?  Those are some LONG words she’s speaking/typing.  Not very many vowels either.  Did you notice?

Here is the second one:

You can’t even pronounce that word, much less speak it.  I mean, really!  How would you even begin to sound that out?

Quote number 3:

Quote number 4:

If I bowed in prayer and said, “Heavenly Father, BFBXFC BVRVBVBBRX…” well, no, I wouldn’t say that because I wouldn’t be ABLE to.

According to the article, Bynum hasn’t addressed the media attention these posts are getting.  What do you think she would say if she did?  “My fingers spoke in tongues?”

This isn’t tongues – this is jibberish.

If Bynum is going to attempt to make people believe she’s speaking in tongues, she could at least try to make it look something like actual words that can be pronounced.  Wouldn’t you think?

IHOP Enters Dominion/Christian Right Politics

 

IHOP is starting to feel its Dominion
oats

By Dr. Orrel
Steinkamp[1]

We are not merely to have the message of the Kingdom, but
become the message.

We are to be living epistles and God’s Word incarnate
if we are to meet the needs of this generation and become the army prophesied in
Scripture.

–Bob Jones &
Paul Keith Davis, “The Light of Favor and Grace is Upon Us. And Doubt Not, Have
Faith to Move Mountains,” 1/17/07, TheElijahList

Where religion has reigned now
get ready for God’s government to reign. This government will prepare a way for
the Kingdom to come in the Body of Christ out of the innermost part of the sons
and daughters.

–Bob Jones, “The
Keys 22:22,” 8/13/10, TheElijahList

Another
national politician is joining with the false Apostles and Prophets of the New
Apostolic Reformation (NAR).[2] Texas
Governor Rick Perry is leading an event scheduled at the Reliant Stadium,
seating 100,000, in Houston on August 6. Alice Patterson of JusticeAtTheGate,
who is a big part of the Dominionist activities of the NAR, sent out an
invitation on June 21st that stated:

Texas Governor
Rick Perry, in an historic move that has not taken place in our lifetime, is
calling for a National Solemn Assembly called The Response: a call to prayer for a nation in
crisis, on Saturday, August 6, 2011, in Reliant Stadium (indoors) in
Houston, Texas.

In a letter dated May 18, 2011 inviting the 49 other
Governors to join him,
Governor Perry cited the book of Joel as the answer for the challenges facing
America.[3]

The
NAR faithful are shaking the Tea
Party trees to fill the stadium. This event is yet another prayer event
with a Dominionist agenda: “The Response: A
Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis.” The organizers are dubbing this
event “a non-denominational apolitical prayer meeting.” But don’t be fooled.
This is common fare for the NAR apostles and prophets in their bid to promote
the Dominion Mandate of their apostles and prophets around the world.[4]

Christian Right politicians see this as
an opportunity for securing much of the Christian Right vote, as well as
politically acquiring access to the on-ground Network (NAR is a network) of the
apostles and prophets, which is well organized even to the precinct
level across America. There will be prayers, sermons, prophesies, and spiritual warfare to be
sure, but there is only one reason for this event and it is Dominionism
political activism pure and simple. Gov. Rick Perry may or may not make a run
for the White House. But even if he doesn’t it serves the Dominion/Political
Mandate of the NAR apostles and prophets and makes them more
visual to the Christian
Right political base. It garners more influence for them in national
politics. And this is the crux of the matter.

What is new about this
event is that the organizational burden of this event will be shouldered by IHOP
(International House of Prayer)[5] staffers
from Kansas City. This is the group known as the “Kansas City Prophets,” which
forms the foundation of the NAR. The Response event leaders, listed at http://theresponseusa.com/leadership.php,
include Luis and Jill Cataldo, who are “currently on staff at the International
House of Prayer in Kansas City.” Randy and Kelsey Bohlender are “prayer
missionaries with the International House of Prayer and on the leadership team”
of Lou
Engle’s “The Call Institute,” now located in Kansas City at IHOPU. Others
among the organizers are IHOP “Apostles” Doug Stringer[6] and Dave Silker, “a senior leader at the
International House of Prayer Missions Base” and “on the board of TheCall with
Lou Engle.”

Jay Swallow,
another NAR Apostle, has often spoken at Apostle Lou
Engle’s IHOP sponsored “The Call” events. Swallow trains people at his SWAT
(Strategic Warriors At Training) camps for identifying and purging American soil
of territorial spirits. This training has more to do with militia training than
sitting round campfires. Cindy Jacobs is heavily involved in bizarre spiritual
warfare events.[7]

Mike Bickle, director
of IHOP, is listed among the endorsees of this conference. This RESPONSE event
marks the beginning of IHOP personnel (excluding Lou Engle) in direct
involvement in politics. Christian Right mainstream
politics! This is not a fringe operation.[8]
This is a noteworthy shift in that previously the public ethos promoted at IHOP
has been that of 24/7 prayer intercession and a wilderness lifestyle. If the
hundreds of interns and staffers from Kansas City and IHOP satellites are
recruited and inducted into the NAR political efforts, it represents a large
body of political warriors.[9]

The Significance of IHOP Entering American
Politics

It was in A.D. 2000, the now 54-year-old Mike
Bickle resigned his church then called Metro Christian Fellowship to launch
Kansas City’s International
House of Prayer, now known by the acronym IHOP. Today Mike Bickle is the
executive director of the multiple ministries of IHOP and senior pastor of
Forerunner Christian Fellowship. IHOP is a 24/7 worship and warfare prayer
ministry to be sure. But it has ballooned into much more than that. This
ministry is sourced from a Bob
Jones prophecy and is modeled after the “Tabernacle of David” teaching, with
singers and musicians being “released” to lead corporate intercession and
worship 24/7 (ongoing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). IHOP boasts over four
hundred fulltime staff that identify themselves as “Intercessory
Missionaries.”

Mike Bickle has authored several books one of which is his
book Growing
in the Prophetic. Bickle’s core teaching is concerning the return of Christ.
Out of the book of Revelation he lifts certain key elements of his message (more
about this in Part 2). He stated on a CBN interview the following, which seems
to encapsulate Bickle’s essential message: “God doesn’t send his Son into a
vacuum. God sends his Son in answer to a consistent global cry from the church.”
Bickle continued: “God prophesies a day that the church in its identity as the
bride of Christ will work in union with the Holy Spirit beckoning Christ to
return…. The world-wide church will become in sync with the Holy Spirit crying
out ‘Come Lord Jesus, break in! break in!’ and so Jesus will then come in His
second coming and before that He will release a revival… the church will be
interceding together [globally] just before the Lord returns. That is one of the
great signs in Revelation of the second coming.” (Note he references the IHOP
teaching on Bridal Paradigm and allegorizes of the Song of Solomon[10]).

Elevating the Later Rain teaching of
the Tabernacle of
David to a functional level of impelling Jesus to return is behind the whole
rational of the 24/7 of IHOP. It really becomes the way the church can force or
at least entice Jesus to return. (See my article, “The Restoration of
Davidic Warfare/Worship,” Plumbline,
Vol. 7, No. 4, Sept/Oct 2002). The Tabernacle of David (TOD) teaching, which Bob
Jones prophesied would be restored at IHOP, is not new to IHOP, but clearly is a
part of the restoration scheme of the old Latter Rain cult
teachers of the early 50’s. George Warnock, Latter
Rain teacher of the 50’s, often referred to the TOD. The so-called 24/7 TOD
teaching is just a companion piece of the whole restoration scheme in
which Apostles and Prophets claim to be “restored” to the final overcoming
end-time church. Along with “restored” apostles and prophets, the Latter Rain
TOD is ” restored” after a supposed appearance in the first century which is now
applied to the last days.

In this regard, however, it can be easily be
established that Acts 15 is not a reference to Davidic worship forms at all. The
context of Acts 15:16 and Amos 9:11 demands that the word “tabernacle” (Heb.
sukkah, which is often translated house)
actually refers to the dynastic rule of David (as in house of Usher, etc.). In
fact in Isaiah 16:5, the TOD is translated as the “rule of David.” “In love a throne will be established and in
faithfulness a man will sit on it , one from the Tabernacle [house] of David” (NIV). In Latter-Rain/Manifest Sons of God
teaching the Tabernacle of David is elevated as a symbol of God’s
manifest presence on earth in the last days. According to this teaching we
are to expect the TOD to be rebuilt in the last days by the church, and as such
it becomes a metaphor for Dominionism. In
Latter Rain teaching, which is the source of TOD and also IHOP, this all points
to a powerful end-times revelation of believers as glorified, transformed, and
perfected and possessed by Christ to such a degree that they become one with him
and become a living corporate Son of God on the earth ruling with him. This is
accomplished by the descent of “the glory” in a final overwhelming event that
will transfigure all those who receive it.[11]

The Kansas City Prophets
and their Rise to Power

The Mike Bickle story at IHOP
however does not begin in A.D. 2000 and the launching of IHOP. There is a long
historical chain reaching far back into the 1980s. It is absolutely necessary to
refer back to the earlier events connected with the so-called “Kansas City
Prophets.” The launching of IHOP, which came much later, was as a result of a
prophecy given to Bickle by Bob Jones, the most disputed of the on-site
prophets. Jones and other resident prophets had gathered around Bickle and
become known as the “The Kansas City Prophets.” These Kansas City Prophets were
exposed as frauds to the Christian public by Ernie Gruen, pastor of Full Faith
Church, who later published a report that became widely publicized and is still
available.[12] The report is called
“Documentation of The Aberrant Practices and Teachings of Kansas City Fellowship
(Grace Ministries).” It is still the most comprehensive exposure of the founding
years of Mike Bickle and the Kansas City Prophets the precursor of the current
IHOP.

As Christians around the nation were calling for investigation and
more information into this maelstrom of controversy regarding the KC prophets,
suddenly in stepped John Wimber from Vineyard Ministries. In 1991, the late John
Wimber stopped the public bloodletting of the controversy and took the Kansas
City Prophets under his authority and oversight. He renamed the ministry Metro
Vineyard Fellowship. This was a pivotal time in their history:

Just at this
moment in history, a confluence was beginning which was to have massive
repercussions throughout the rest of evangelicalism: John Wimber of the Vineyard
Movement connected with the Kansas City Prophets. John Wimber had previously
been picked up as an “experiment” by C. Peter Wagner at Fuller Theological
Seminary for “signs and wonders” classes. For several decades Fuller had
been.laying considerable groundwork for the formation of new doctrines –
ecclesiology, eschatology, missiology, soteriology, etc. Wimber’s connection to
KCF proved to be the catalyst for the beginnings of what C. Peter Wagner was to
later call the “New Apostolic Reformation.” The esoteric doctrines of the Latter
Rain movement became an integral part of his post-modern evangelical canon. And
because of Wagner’s influence, KCF leaders who would have been obscure in 1991,
such as Mike Bickle, are now widely known throughout evangelicalism.[13]

Among the Kansas City prophets,
especially Augustine, Cain and Jones became controversial, not only for the
prophesies they uttered but for the prophetic foundation they laid down, which
Bickle now calls “The
Blueprint Prophecy.” Currently all IHOP interns must study this “Blueprint
Prophecy.” But even more alarming than the silly and absurd prophesies given
in this “Blueprint”
is the fact IHOP is openly and squarely built on these three prophets. They form
the foundation of the current ministry. But the interns and others at IHOP are
only given a redacted and sanitized version of these prophets and their
prophesies. Furthermore, Bickle has revised this “blueprint
document” a number of times to excise terms like “Latter Rain,” etc. Some of
the prophesies have been removed, and when questioned about this Bickle says he
simply couldn’t understand or even remember some of these now hidden
prophesies.[14] Later I will select certain
prophetic examples from the “blueprint
prophecy.” but first I am now going to deal briefly with the three founding
prophets who are still at the foundational
blueprint of what we know today as Kansas City
Prophets/IHOP.

The Kansas City Prophets: By Their Roots You Shall
Know Them

The three foundational prophets at Kansas City
are demonstrably false. That in itself would not make them unique among the
current club of these self-anointed, self-appointed apostles and prophets. But
these prophesies, even by current prophesy standards, are odd, silly and
ludicrous. Even more alarming is the fact that all three of these prophets have
a history of sexual perversion. How can a movement expand when its foundation is
false and sexually perverted? This only casts a shadow on the total movement
that is built upon them. It is not surprising then that the IHOP practices a
“Bridal Mysticism,” with sexual overtones among those who experience personal,
imaginative, even romantic intimacy, with Jesus the bridegroom.[15] Lou Engle, the Apostle at IHOP, has led young
people in an actual Hebrew
marriage ceremony to Jesus at his “The Call” rallies. It would take too much
space to give a full historical account of these three false prophets. I will
simply list these three and give random samples of their prophesies and sexual
perversions.

Augustine
Alcala

There is not much information on him. His claim to fame
is that he prophesied to Bickle in St. Louis that he would move to Kansas City
and initiate a new move of God there. The reason there is not much information
on prophet Ausustine is that apparently he early fell in disrepute.[14] “Julie’s Story,” that was once published at
“Gray Coats” on the Internet, revealed what apparently happened. She stated: “My
husband and I were a part of KCF from its inception… Augustine prophesied that
Bickle needed to move to KC and begin a new move of God. Augustine was later
dismissed as somewhat false when a certain prophecy never came to pass. He was
later discovered to have had a hidden homosexual life style that was exposed
before he passed away.” Augustine apparently had a run-in early on with Rick
Joyner and Bobby Conner (of throwing spiritual glory grenades fame[16]), and reportedly mentored Terry Kruse, who
authored a book called God’s New Breed.
Augustine died 5-11-10.[17]

Paul
Cain

Paul was a boy wonder child evangelist, who often filled in
for William Branham[18] emulating Branham’s
ministry. But after the sudden death of Branham on Dec. 18, 1965, and the
resultant demise of the Latter-Rain as a movement, Cain went into self-imposed
exile for years, probably in the Phoenix area as a single man among some
die-hard Branhamites still waiting for Branham to be resurrected.[19] In 1987, Cain suddenly reappeared, linking
himself to the Kansas City Prophets, Mike Bickle and Bob Jones.[20] Cain was given special recognition as “the
Terror of the Lord” prophet by Bob Jones, who also became associated with the KC
Prophets during this time.[21] In a sense
Cain was like the second coming of Branham. All of the other prophetic wannabes,
including Jones, gave deference to Cain. Cain appeared to have the same
clairvoyant abilities as Branham. Nevertheless he once prophesied that Bill
Clinton would lead America in a worldwide revival.[22]

One person who was on staff at
Metro-Vineyard at the time has since reported that Bickle often pointed out
people in the meetings, providing both Cain and Jones with historical commentary
that enhanced the awe of their ministries. However, there is no way to establish
this report. In those days of researching Cain’s clairvoyance fetes, I can
remember having attacks of doubt flowing over me to the effect that this man
must be a man of God. It was like a cloud over my mind and spirit.[23] But now history has provided for us all the
fact that, at the time of his great awe of clairvoyance activity with Bickle and
Jones, Cain was even then a practicing homosexual. In Feb 2004 even Cain’s most
loyal supporters, Rick Joyner, Jack Deere and Mike Bickle, were confronted with
evidence that Cain was a practicing homosexual, to which he confessed. But Cain
resisted a process of restoration.[24]
Nevertheless, recently Todd Bentley in his Lakeland fiasco invoked the alcoholic
homosexual to make a cameo appearance.[25]

Bob
Jones

Augustine is dead and Paul Cain is discredited, but Bob
Jones is currently very active. Although he is not in residence in KC he still
is used in promotion videos by IHOP. If Cain was followed for his apparent
clairvoyance abilities, Jones is known for the silliness and absurdity of his
visions, and his trips to the 3rd heaven. My friend Mike Oppenheimer has
compiled a short list of Jones visionary oddities.[26]

Bob Jones, however, is still adulated
by the prophetic community. I recently saw online how he was featured at Bill
Johnson’s Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry in Redding CA.[27] Thousands of young people were pressing in on
Bob Jones and each was promised an impartation from
him as he grasped their hands. It’s like they needed to touch him (or the hem of
his garment) to have an impartation. With Cain
now discredited, Bob Jones seems now to have inherited the awe inspiring “Terror
of the Lord” reputation that previously was accorded to Cain. In recent times
Jones takes people on guided trips to the third heaven. Bickle claims to have
gone on these trips on two occasions. Bickle was interviewed by the Kansas City Star and cryptically stated that
he had gone to heaven twice.[28] In a series
of five hour-long tapes entitled Visions and
Revelations, Mike Bickle and Bob Jones are heard wowing followers of the
KCF with all sorts of tales of their experiences in the paranormal.[29] Bob Jones claims that when he was 9 years old
living in Arkansas, an angel carrying a “great trumpet” came riding down the
from the sky on a white horse and stopped before him in the middle of dirt road.
He didn’t know what to make of it until he was 13, when he was escorted to the
very throne room of God in heaven…. Many years later he saw Jesus in the form
of a light who would grab and kiss men and women of different ages and then make
them disappear by absorbing them into his body. It was like “two big ole doors
right there in his heart and it’d be just that, and they was
gone.”…

Many of Jones prophesies are not only silly, but just plain
wrong. But never mind. Restored prophets and seers have no need to be accurate.
Jones response to his and the other prophetic failures is that if they had 100%
accuracy it would cause too many dead Ananias’s and Sapphira’s (referring to the
story in Acts
5).[30] How is that for making people
thankful for failed prophecies? Jones tells us God told him that prophets are
like guns and prophesies are bullets and inaccurate prophesies are like blanks.
God said further: “I’m loading the guns. I am
putting the blanks in!” Wow! Jones would have us believe that God is
responsible when prophets shoot blanks, that it scares the enemy.[31]

It would take a large book to catalog
the comical nonsense of Bob Jones visions and revelations. But what concerns me
even more is the sexual misconduct of Bob Jones. Two women confronted Bob Jones
for sexual misconduct in “using his prophetic gifts for sexual misconduct.”
Various people have described this as a fondling or having women stand before
him naked during prophecy. This leaves too much to the imagination. Bob Jones
asserted that he did not have sexual intercourse with them. Sounds almost like
Clinton asserting “I did not have sexual relations.” But this only underscores
that for Jones he was not only sexually discovered, but as a sex offender he
cannot be trusted let alone receive adulation as a prophet/seer. He is not only
a false prophet, which is bad enough, but an admitted sex offender, and he is
still a foundation stone for IHOP.[32]

In Bickle’s book Growing in the Prophetic, in the appendix
Bickle gives a catalog list of phenomena that supposedly accompany the presence
of God: shaking, jerking, loss of body strength, heavy breathing, eyes
fluttering, lips trembling, oil on the body, changes in skin color, weeping,
laughing, drunkenness, travailing, dancing, falling, visions…. angelic
visitations, violent rolling, screaming, coldness, and nausea.” There are more
ad nauseum.

Stay
tuned for Part 2:
The Rapid Expansion and
Franchising and Global IHOP Branding

Editor’s Endnotes:
1. Dr. Steinkamp has
followed these New Apostolic Reformation (particularly the IHOP/Latter Rain)
leaders for the past two decades, and written about them extensively in his
publication, The Plumbline. His archive
of old newsletters can be found at: http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/plumblinearchive.html.
Many of the comments in this article can be exhaustively documented from his
prior writings as well as archived materials found at these websites http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/
and http://www.discernment-ministries.org/
and also on this Herescope blog. Some of the documentation for this article
pertaining to the history and background of the Latter Rain, New Apostolic
Reformation, Kansas City Prophets and IHOP is so exhaustive that we refer
readers to these excellent web archives. These Editor’s Endnotes were compiled
with the research assistance of Sarah Leslie.
2. For important background
information on this article, read the previous articles by Dr. Orrel Steinkamp
posted on Herescope: “The Coalescing of the Christian Right with Apostolic
Dominionism” by Dr. Orrel Steinkamp, 4/8/10, http://herescope.blogspot.com/2010/04/coalescing-of-christian-right-with.html;
“R&R Revival and Revolt: The Tea Party’s Strange Bedfellows and What They
Believe,” 4/22/10, http://herescope.blogspot.com/2010/04/r-revival-and-revolt.html;
“Hitting the Political Big-Time: Can the New Apostles and Prophets Seize
Dominion by Political Intermarriage? Can God’s Supposed Lost Dominion Be
Regained By Mere Political Means?” 4/11/11, http://herescope.blogspot.com/2011/04/hitting-political-big-time.html;
“Restoring the Gospel of Salvation: Does not the salvation of sinners trump
national restoration?” 6/29/10, http://herescope.blogspot.com/2010/06/restoring-gospel-of-salvation.html.
3.
The letter, titled “A
Personal Request from Alice Patterson, continues, “Listen to Gov. Perry’s
special invitation here: http://www.stephenstephanian.com/PrayerEvent/2011-06-09-Greeting-AudioPrayerEvent.aif,”
and urges people to sign up at www.theresponseusa.com.
See www.justiceatthegate.org.
The latest rally appears to be one of a series of “renewal” gatherings of a
similar nature, in which Texas Gov. Perry has been a key leader. See the
documentation in the article Iowa ‘Pastors’ Policy Briefing’ to host 2012
hopefuls,” by Lynda Waddington, 3/1/11, http://www.americanindependent.com/171596/iowa-pastors-policy-briefing-2012-presidential-hopefuls.
Gov. Perry is just one of many potential Republican candidates for president who
have developed close ties with leaders of the NAR. This often comes via groups
such as the American Family Association, Family Research Council and other more
“mainstream” evangelical political activism entities that are now working
hand-in-glove with the false apostles and prophets of the NAR, including Rick
Joyner, Lou Engle, Cindy Jacobs, etc. The extent to which these groups and
candidates share the radical Dominionist warfare agenda of their new NAR
partners should be a matter of deep concern to every freedom-loving American
citizen.
4. We do not question the need for prayer. But see previous articles
on Herescope about the “prayer agenda” of the NAR and how it is part of the
Dominionist agenda, such as: “May Day Prayers: What Repentance?” 4/27/11, http://herescope.blogspot.com/2010/04/may-day-prayers.html.
5.
The International House of Prayer IHOP was finally, after all these years, being
sued by the International House of Pancake (IHOP) for trademark dilution and
infringement. See “Pancakes and prayers: IHOP name prompts another suit,” Kansas City Business Journal, 6/1/11,
http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2011/06/01/pancakes-and-prayers-ihop-name.html?s=print
and
IHOP Sues IHOP,” 9/10/11, http://www.rightwingwatch.org/print/5953.
The suit was apparently dropped: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/ihop-drops-suits-against-ihop.
6.
“Apostle Stringer of IHOP” has blamed the Sept 11 attacks on the homosexuals in
our land (See http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rick-perry-partners-apostle-who-blames-america-september-11-attacks).
Even if this were true, the first century was filled with homosexuals in Romans
circles. The only way to know this is from revelations from already false
prophets. See information about the false prophet Paul Cain and his
homosexuality later in this article.
7. Swallow has been a ringleader in the
movement for a long time. He can be found in the company of the false apostles
and prophets on The Elijah List, chief
organ for the NAR/Latter Rain, e.g., http://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word/7147
and http://www.elijahlist.com/words/textonly.html?ID=7747.
An article”Jay Swallow,” http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/individuals/jay-swallow,
summarizes Swallow’s recent activities: “Another The Response endorser is ‘spiritual
warfare’ leader James ‘Jay’ Swallow, a Native American “apostle” who founded the
Two Rivers Native American Training Center. Like Jacobs, Swallow has spoken at
The Call rallies including one in which he accepted on behalf of all Native
Americans Brownback’s
apology for the federal government’s mistreatment of indigenous people.
According to his biography,
‘God has given Dr. Swallow extraordinary insight into ‘healing the land’ through
prayer and spiritual warfare.’ The Center is built around the ‘Strategic Warriors At
Training (SWAT): A Christian Military Training Camp for the purpose of
dealing with the occult and territorial enemy strong holds in America.’ Seminars
include ‘Demonic Spirits,’ ‘Spiritual Warfare,’ ‘Identifying the Strongman,’ and
‘Freemasonry.’ The training is apparently so intense that Swallow asks
participants sign a ‘release
of liability’ form to waive their right to sue.” Notice the highly
Dominionist “SWAT: Strategic Warriors At Training” graphic posted with this
article.
8. The mainstream nature has been observed by a political
commentator who noted that the event “will feature Don Wildmon and Buddy Smith
of the American Family Association, Jim Garlow of Renewing American Leadership,
David Lane, who was involved in the effort to remove the Supreme Court Justices
in Iowa and is behind the various “Restoration Project” events across America,
former Congressmen Bob McEwen, as well as several leaders associated with Lou
Engle and/or the International House of Prayer in Kansas City.” http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rick-perry-teams-afa-call-prayer-rally.
Elsewhere on Herescope we have written about Jim Garlow’s open association
with Lance Wallnau, who is aggressively working to build the 7 mountains of
Dominionism. See these posts: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2010/05/mainstreaming-dominionism.html;
http://herescope.blogspot.com/2010/08/next-great-awakening.html;
http://herescope.blogspot.com/2010/09/next-great-awakening.html;
http://herescope.blogspot.com/2010/09/next-great-awakening_20.html.
Garlow sent out a letter on June 18th promoting the Gov. Perry event titled “If
a Governor Asked Us as Pastors to Pray, Would We?” And Texas Gov. Perry has
previously appeared with Cindy Jacobs, Rick Joyner, Lou Engle, and other NAR and
evangelical leaders at the April 2010 Freedom Federation Summit at Liberty
University.
9. For
important background information on Mike Bickle, see Bob DeWaay’s report, “Mike
Bickle and International House of Prayer: The Latter Rain Redivius,” posted
here: http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue107.htm
10.
See the Herescope post by K. Jentoft, “Mike Bickle’s Gigolo Jesus,” 5/1/08, for
important background understanding of this “Bridal Paradigm” of Bickle’s
movement. http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/05/mike-bickles-gigolo-jesus.html
11.
See also Ed Tarkowski’s 1990s series on the “Laughing Phenomena: Its History and
Possible Effects on the Church.” Part 3 explains some of these doctrines: http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/Laugh3.html

12. This report can be found here: http://www.deceptionbytes.com/AberrentPractices.pdf.
A full write-up about this article by Pastor Gruen and the background was
published by Discernment Ministries back in 1990 in the Discernment Newsletter, “The New Order,” Vol.
1, No. 7, 1990, http://www.discernment-ministries.org/Newsletters/NL1990Nov.pdf.
Hard copy of this report is available upon request. Dr. Steinkamp observes,
“Ernie Guen was mercilessly attacked for the publication. The KCP fabricated a
response that Gruen confessed to being deceived, etc. But Gruen rejected this
fabrication completely. Gruen has since passed into glory. Some of those of us
still involved in Discernment Ministries heard firsthand accounts of these
details.”
13. “Preface” by Sarah Leslie from the booklet published by
Discernment Ministries titled JOEL’S
ARMY, which is a history and compendium of the aberrant beliefs and
practices of the false prophets of the KC group. This booklet is a “must read”
for those trying to understand the IHOP movement. http://www.discernment-ministries.org/JoelsArmy.pdf.
14.
Dr. Steinkamp comments that this “might
indeed be the understatement of all time. It leaves me wondering what these
excised prophesies now hidden could have been that required that they be
forgotten or actually hidden. The prophesies we still have are such that the
hidden prophesies must be so ludicrous, absurd and false that they cannot stand
the light of day even to the faithful at IHOP.” Click on the live links wherever
the “Blueprint” is mentioned in this article to see the many variations on the
theme posted online.
15. See “The Bridal Paradigm,” The Plumbline, Vol. 14, No. 2, by Dr. Orrel
Steinkamp at http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/orrel34.pdf.
See also “Mike Bickle’s Gigolo Jesus,” Herescope, 5/01/08, http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/05/mike-bickles-gigolo-jesus.html
16.
See Dr. Orrel
Steinkamp, “Tossing Glory Grenades,” The
Plumbline, Vol. 11, No. 4, http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/orrel30.html
which connects Bobby Conner to the Todd Bentley meetings in Lakeland, Florida.
Bobby Conner “prophesied” this radical Dominionist “word” posted at http://www.etpv.org/1999/ritch.html:
“This revolution is not going to be with guns, knives and hand grenades; it’s
going to be with something far more powerful than that. It is going to be with
the weapons of the Kingdom of God… The definition of the word revolution is
‘an overthrow of a corrupt government.’ We are not talking about the White House
here; we are talking about the church house. God is going to take the government
of the church out of the hands of man and put it back into the hands of the Son
of God. That is the only place it deserves to be. Let me tell you a few things
about revolution. There is no such thing as a peaceful revolution. And, a
revolution always starts with a small group, never with the masses. It sweeps in
the masses but it always starts with a few that are hungry, desperate, destitute
and willing for change. Many of you already believe that there is a change
coming. If you have been listening with any prophetic insight, you can hear the
wind moving in the mulberry trees, you can feel something in the air; there is
change coming. God is going to bring about this change in a very strong, unique
and dynamic way.”
17. “God’s New Breed,” see https://christiancrunch.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/gods-new-breed/.
This is an obvious reference to the “New Breed” prophecies about an “elect seed”
that is foundational Latter Rain heresy, which we explained in this Herescope
post: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2006/02/new-breed-defined.html.
See “Prophet Bob Jones and The Florida Fires,” 5/14/08,

Prophet Bob Jones and The Florida Fires

where it says that: “Bob Jones is a prophet from the prophetic movement in
the early part of the century. His words have come to pass over the years. He
runs with Rick Joyner of Morningstar Ministries, Bobby Conner, and used to run
with a little-known prophet by the name of Augustine Alcala. (This was
the man who mentored Terry Kruse from our ministry, Miracle Life Now, and prophesied to
Mike Bickle about his ministry that became IHOP. He has now passed away to be
with the Lord.)” [Ed. Note: This article was
pulled shortly after this post was published on Herescope.]
18.
William Branham’s teachings undergird the Kansas City Prophets movement (IHOP)
and are foundational to understanding the NAR. See his history and teachings
summarized at http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/williambranham1.html,
Branham’s quotations can be found in an article by Mike Oppenheimer, “The
Teachings of ‘the Prophet’ William Branham,” posted here: http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain4.htm.
19.
There was a “Special Prophetic Edition” of the Grace City Report, which was a “monthly
newsletter for the six congregations of Kansas City Fellowship,” dated Fall
1989, which contains many key articles about history and mission, one of which
is “Paul Cain: A Personal Profile,” which gives a somewhat sanitized and
glorified history of Paul Cain and his ministry. This report says that during
this time Paul lives in a “small, two-bedroom home in Phoenix, Ariz., where he,
with the help of his sister and family members, took care of his mother.” This
report also notes that in “1957, the late William Branham had an angelic
visitation and was told not to go to a series of large meetings already planned
in Europe, but to send Paul instead.” The report indicates that during this time
Paul was working on the doctrine of “a new breed of men and women
leaders.”
20. The Grace City Report
cited above records, “On April 27, 1987, the Lord ordained a divine appointment
for Paul with Mike Bickle, Noel Alexander, John Paul Jackson, Bob Scott and
other brothers from Kansas City Fellowship. Mike, KCF senior pastor had heard
about Paul in 1983 and had prayed many times that the Lord would arrange a
divine appointment between them.” It then chronicles how Mike and Noel met Paul
at a pastors conference in Birmingham, Alabama, and how after that Paul began to
visit “KCF regularly” and became “a beloved father and pillar in the church” as
he helped “lay a more solid foundation.” The report says that “Mike and the KCF
eldership instantly felt the Lord prompting them to make a deep and permanent
commitment to serve Paul Cain in any way possible for the rest of his days as
the Lord permitted.”
21. This same Grace
City Report on Paul Cain records that “Bob Jones said the Lord spoke to
him in a dream and revealed the nature of Paul’s ministry” which would be “‘The
terror of the Lord’ or “The jealousy of God.'”
22. See Mike Oppenheimer’s
report on “Prophet Paul Cain,” posted
here: http://www.letusreason.org/latrain5.htm
23.
And no wonder this is confusing and troublesome. The same Grace City Report cited above also ran an
article “Paul Cain’s Ministry: Recent Manifestations of the Holy Spirit,” which
indicates that the man frequently had manifestations that would normally be
associated with occult activity, including power surges, electrical reactions,
and predicting earthquakes. A notable earthquake prediction that came true,
giving Cain the aura of credibility, accompanied John Wimber’s visit with Paul
Cain in Anaheim. The story as told by Wimber, which is recounted in this Grace City Report, is that in 1987 Cain
informed Jack Deere, a pastor in the Anaheim Vineyard, that his visit would be
accompanied by a big earthquake. The Report says “At 3:38 a.ml on the day Paul
arrived, Dec. 3, there was a major earthquake in Pasadena” which resulted in
Paul Cain receiving John Wimber’s “full attention.”
24. Dr. Orrel Steinkamp,
“Paul Cain, Latter Rain Prophet of Renown Is Now Discredited,” The Plumbline, Vol. 9, No. 5, Dec. 2004, http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/orrel19.html
25.
Thanks to YouTube, you can see this for yourself: “Paul Cain with Todd Bentley,
Pt. 1,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25jTVb5Bj8
and “Paul Cain transfers His “Anointing” to Todd Bentely [sic],” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db76DwFSZjE
For a reality check, recall the subject of this article post, which is that
these IHOP leaders are now part and parcel of the Christian Right Tea Party in
America, and are openly associating with high profile presidential
candidates.
26. Mike Oppenheimer, “Bob Jones – A Tail of a Prophet,” http://letusreason.org/Latrain52.htm.
See the Ernie Gruen
report for many more examples. Bob Jones was also the subject of a
featured article in the Grace City Report
cited above, in an article titled “Bob Jones: A Personal Profile” which
details his angelic visitations and out of body experiences.This story
chronicles how Bob Jones began to hear about “an army of young people who would
be raised up. ‘I saw them, they were all young soldiers,’ he said…. In early
1983, Bob heard about a group of young people who had only recently begun a new
church in the south Kansas City area. After visiting them, he knew this was some
of the ‘new breed’ the Lord had told him about in the visions in 1976. The Lord
brought Bob to Kansas City Fellowship just a few months after its
beginning.”
27. http://www.scribd.com/doc/25418818/BILL-JOHNSON-THE-DECEIVER
and note the aberrant theology in evidence on this sad YouTube video of a Bethel
student: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4VpH1FKkSQ.
See also TheElijahList promo for “A Call
to the Body of Christ: The Shift: Washington DC” http://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word_pf.html?ID=9239
where Bob Jones appeared with NAR bigshots like Chuck Pierce, Rick Joyner and
Dutch Sheets at a quasi-political “prayer” event Oct 30-Nov. 6, 2010. In case
you think this foray into politics is an aberration, note that Bob Jones, Rick
Joyner, Paul Keith David, Ryan Wyatt teamed up with 7 mountains cheerleader
Lance Wallnau for a “Taking Your Land Advancing the Kingdom Conference” in
Knoxville, TN, Sept, 17-20, 2009, http://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word/7956,
where the Dominionist church is said to have “a mandate to invade every worldly
culture with the supernatural culture of God’s Kingdom. God has a mountain that
He wants you to conquer; a destiny that only you can fulfill.”
28. This is
reported on and quoted here: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/ihop-call-247
which is linked over to the Kansas City
Star article which is no longer available online
29. This material is
excerpted from the report by the late William M. Alnor, “The Kansas City
Prophets,” posted http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/kcp.html
30.
Documented by Pastor Bill Randles,”Beware the New Prophets,” http://www.e-n.org.uk/p-986-Beware-the-New-Prophets.htm

31. This is a paraphrase (except for the Jones’ quote) by Pastor Bill
Randles, Weighed and Found Wanting
(1995) book. The excerpt is published here: http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/heresy.html
and it reads: “Jones says we shouldn’t worry about inaccurate prophesies, for
God told him that prophets are like guns and prophecies are like bullets and
inaccurate prophecies are like blanks. And he also says that God told him, “l’m loading the guns, I’m putting the blanks
in!” Incredible! Jones would have us believe that God is responsible for
inaccurate prophecies! Supposedly, even when we shoot blanks, it scares the
enemy! Bob Jones complains about people who “try to make us Old Testament
prophets” meaning to hold them to the standard of Deut 18.”
32. In the
Wikipedia entry for Mike Bickle, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Bickle_(minister),
footnote 21 states: ^ “Kansas City ‘Prophet’ Disciplined”, Christianity Today 36 (3): 67, March 9, 1992.,
ISSN 0009-5753 “Vineyard leaders took strong steps recently to discipline
well-known “prophet” Bob Jones after Jones admitted to “Sexual misconduct (not
adultery)” with two women.” “Vineyard leadership also is supporting the Joneses
through regular counseling, visits by the Kansas City Metro Vineyard leadership,
and monetary contributions.”

posted by Discernment Research Group @ 7/01/2011
11:06:00 PM

A Study of Dispensation – Chapter 5 – Arthur Walkington Pink

This is the final installment of the Dispensation series.  It has been such a tremendous encouragement and blessing to me.  I pray it has been for you as well.  As we finish this up, I again ask that each one who reads Brother Pink’s final thoughts, that we pray and ask God to reveal His truths through this man’s words.  May the Holy Spirit guide our thoughts and remove our own interpretations to allow His Ways to be higher than our own.  I know that removing dispensationalism from our method of study is very difficult for some, and I pray that anyone with ears to hear, let him hear.  Amen.

Gods greatest blessings of peace and understanding be upon each of you today.

A Study of Dispensationalism by A.W. Pink

Chapter 5

---

In these articles we are seeking to show the use which believers should make of God’s Word: or more particularly, how that it is both their privilege and their duty to receive the whole of it as addressed immediately unto themselves, and to turn the same unto practical account, by appropriating its contents to their personal needs. The Bible is a book which calls not so much for the exertion of our intellect as it does for the exercise of our affections, conscience and will. God has given it to us not for our entertainment but for our education, to make known what He requires from us. It is to be the traveler’s guide as he journeys through the maze of this world, the mariner’s chart as he sails the sea of life. Therefore, whenever we open the Bible, the all-important consideration for each of us to keep before him is, What is there here for me today? What bearing does the passage now before me have upon my present case and circumstances—what warning, what encouragement, what information? What instruction is there to direct me in the management of my business, to guide me in the ordering of my domestic and social affairs, to promote a closer walking with God?

I should see myself addressed in every precept, included in every promise. But it is greatly to be feared that, through failure to appropriate God’s Word unto their own case and circumstances, there is much Bible reading and study which is of little or no real benefit to the soul. Nothing else will secure us from the infections of this world, deliver from the temptations of Satan, and be so effectual a preservative from sin, as the Word of God received into our affections. “The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide” (Ps. 37:31) can only be said of the one who has made personal appropriation of that Law, and is able to aver with the Psalmist, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee” (119:11). Just so long as the Truth is actually working in us, influencing us in a practical way, is loved and revered by us, stirs the conscience, are we kept from falling into open sin—as Joseph was preserved when evilly solicited by his master’s wife (Gen. 39:9). And only as we personally go out and daily gather our portion of manna, and feed upon the same, will there be strength provided for the performing of duty and the bringing forth of fruit to the glory of God.

Let us take Genesis 17:1 as a simple illustration. “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before Me, and be thou perfect” or “sincere.” How is the Christian to apply such a verse unto himsel? First of all, let him note to whom this signal favour and honour was shown: namely to him who is the “father of all them that believe” (Rom. 4:11,12,16)—and he was the first person in the world to whom the Lord is said to have appeared! Second, observe when it was that Jehovah appeared unto him: namely in his old age, when nature’s force was spent and death was written on the flesh. Third, mark attentively the particular character in which the Lord was now revealed to him: “the Almighty God,” or more literally “El Shaddai”—”the all-sufficient God.” Fourth, consider the exhortation which accompanied the same: “walk before Me, and be thou sincere.” Fifth, ponder those details in the light of the immediate sequel; God’s making promise that he should beget a son by Sarah, who was long past the age of child-bearing (verses 15-19). Everything that is for God must be effected by His mighty power: He can and must do everything—the flesh profits nothing, no movement of mere nature is of any avail.

Now as the believer ponders that memorable incident, hope should be inspired within him. El Shaddai is as truly his God as He was Abraham’s! That is clear from 2 Corinthians 7:1, for one of those promises is, “I will be a Father unto you. . . .saith the Lord Almighty” (6:18), and from Revelation 1:8, where the Lord Jesus says unto the churches, “I am Alpha and Omega. . . .the Almighty.” It is a declaration of His omnipotence, to whom all things are possible. “The all-sufficient God” tells of what He is in Himself—independent, self-existent; and what He is unto His people—the Supplier of their every need. When Christ said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee,” it was all one with what Jehovah said unto Abraham. Doubtless the Lord appeared unto the patriarch in visible (and human) form: He does so to us before the eyes of faith. Often He is pleased to meet with us in the ordinances of His grace, and send us on our way rejoicing. Sometimes He “manifests” Himself (John 14:21) to us in the retirements of privacy. Frequently He appears for us in His providences, showing Himself strong on our behalf. Now, says He, “Walk before Me sincerely” in the believing realization that I am all-sufficient for thee, conscious of My almightiness, and all will be well with thee.

Let us now adduce some of the many proofs of the assertions made in our opening sentences, proofs supplied by the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus in the application which They made of the Scriptures. It is very striking indeed to discover that the very first moral commandment which God gave to mankind, namely that which was to regulate the marriage relationship, was couched in such terms that it comprehended a Divine law which is universally and perpetually binding: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24)—quoted by Christ in Matthew 19:5. “When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement” (Deut. 24:1). That statute was given in the days of Moses, nevertheless we find our Lord referring to the same and telling the Pharisees of His day, “For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept” (Mark 10:5).

The principle for which we are here contending is beautifully illustrated in Psalm 27:8, “When Thou saidst, Seek ye My face; my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” Thus David made particular what was general, applying to himself personally what was said to the saints collectively. That is ever the use each of us should make of every part of God’s Word—as we see the Saviour in Matthew 4:7, changing the “ye” of Deuteronomy 6:16, to “thou.” So again in Acts 1:20, we find Peter, when alluding to the defection of Judas, altering the “let their habitation” of Psalm 69:25, to “let his habitation be desolate.” That was not taking an undue liberty with Holy Writ, but, instead, making a specific application of what was indefinite.

“Put not forth thyself in the presence of the king, and stand not in the place of great men: for better it is that it be said unto thee, Come up hither; than that thou shouldest be put lower in the presence of the prince whom thine eyes have seen” (Prov. 25:6,7). Upon which Thomas Scott justly remarked, “There can be no reasonable doubt that our Lord referred to those words in His admonition to ambitious guests at the Pharisee’s table (Luke 14:7-11), and was understood to do so. While, therefore, this gives His sanction to the book of Proverbs, it also shows that those maxims may be applied to similar cases, and that we need not confine their interpretation exclusively to the subject which gave rise to the maxims.” Not even the presence of Christ, His holy example, His heavenly instruction, could restrain the strife among His disciples over which should be the greatest. Loving to have the pre-eminence (3 John 9,10) is the bane of godliness in the churches.

“I the Lord have called Thee. . . . and give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles”; “I will also give Thee for a light to the Gentiles, that Thou mayest be My salvation unto the end of the earth” (Isa. 42:6; 49:6). Those words were spoken by the Father unto the Messiah, yet in Acts 13:46,47 we find Paul saying of himself and Barnabas, “Lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so bath the Lord commanded us; saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth”! So again in Romans 10:15 we find the Apostle was inspired to make application unto Christ’s servant of that which was said immediately of Him: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace” (Isa. 52:7): “How shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace” (Rom. 10:15). “He is near that justifieth Me. . . . who is he that shall condemn Me?” (Isa. 50:8,9): the context shows unmistakably that Christ is there the speaker, yet in Romans 8:33, 34 the Apostle hesitates not to apply those words unto the members of His body: “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth?”

The unspeakably solemn commission given to Isaiah concerning his apostate generation (6:9,10) was applied by Christ to the people of His day, saying: “And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah” (Matt. 13:14,15). Again, in 29:13, Isaiah announced that the Lord said, “This people draw near Me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour Me, but have removed their heart far from Me,” while in Matthew 15:7 we find Christ saying to the scribes and Pharisees, “Hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth,” etc. Even more striking is Christ’s rebuke unto the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection of the body, “Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matt. 22:31,32). What God spoke immediately to Moses at the burning bush was designed equally for the instruction and comfort of all men unto the end of the world. What the Lord has said unto a particular person, He says unto everyone who is favored to read His Word. Thus does it concern us to hear and heed the same, for by that Word we shall be judged in the last great day (John 12:48).

The fundamental principle for which we are here contending is plainly expressed again by Christ in Mark 13:37, “And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.” That exhortation to the Apostles is addressed directly to the saints in all generations and places. As Owen well said, “The Scriptures speak to every age, every church, every person, not less than to those to whom they were first directed. This showeth us how we should be affected in reading the Word: we should read it as a letter written by the Lord of grace from heaven, to us by name.” If there be any books in the New Testament particularly restricted, it is the “pastoral Epistles,” yet the exhortation found in 2 Timothy 2:19, is generalized: “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” Those who are so fond of restricting God’s Word would say that, “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (verse 3) is addressed to the minister of the Gospel, and pertains not to the rank and file of believers. But Ephesians 6:10-17 shows (by necessary implication) that it applies to all the saints, for the militant figure is again used, and used there without limitation. The Bullinger school insist that James and Peter—who gave warning of those who in the last time should walk after their own ungodly lusts—wrote to Jewish believers; but Jude (addressed to all the sanctified) declares they “told you” (verse 18).

“Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord” (Heb. 12:5). That exhortation is taken from Proverbs 3:11, so that here is further evidence that the precepts of the Old Testament (like its promises) are not restricted unto those who were under the Mosaic economy, but apply with equal directness and force to those under the new covenant. Observe well the tense of the verb “which speaketh”: though written a thousand years previously, Paul did not say “which hath spoken”—the Scriptures are a living Word through which their Author speaks today. Note too “which speaketh unto you”—New Testament saints: all that is contained in the book of Proverbs is as truly and as much the Father’s instruction to Christians as the contents of the Pauline Epistles. Throughout that book God addresses us individually as “My son” (2:1; 3:1; 4:1; 5:1). That exhortation is as urgently needed by believers now as by any who lived in former ages. Though children of God, we are still children of Adam—willful, proud, independent, requiring to be disciplined, to be under the Father’s rod, to bear it meekly, and to be exercised thereby in our hearts and consciences.

A word now upon transferred application, by which we mean giving a literal turn to language which is figurative, or vice versa. Thus, whenever the writer steps on to icy roads, he hesitates not to literalize the prayer, “Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe” (Ps. 119:117). “I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for Thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety” (Ps. 4:8) is to be given its widest latitude, and regarded at both the rest of the body under the protection of Providence and the repose of the soul in the assurance of God’s protecting grace. In 2 Corinthians 8:14 Paul urges that there should be an equality of giving, or a fair distribution of the burden, in the collection being made to relieve the afflicted saints in Jerusalem. That appeal was backed up with, “As it is written, he that hath gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack.” That is a reference to the manna gathered by the Israelites (Ex. 16:18): those who gathered the largest quantity had more to give unto the aged and feeble; so rich Christians should use their surplus to provide for the poor of the flock. But great care needs to be taken lest we clash with the Analogy of the Faith: thus “the house of Saul waxed weaker and weaker” (2 Sam. 3:1) certainly does not mean that “the flesh” becomes enervated as the believer grows in grace, for universal Christian experience testifies that indwelling sin rages as vigorously at the end as at the beginning.

A brief word upon double application. Whereas preachers should ever be on their guard against taking the children’s bread and casting it to the dogs, by applying to the unsaved promises given to or statements made concerning the saints; on the other hand, they need to remind believers of the continuous force of the Scriptures and their present suitability to their cases. For instance, the gracious invitation of Christ, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28), and “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink” (John 7:37), must not be limited to our first approach to the Saviour as lost sinners, but as 1 Peter 2:4 says, “to whom coming”—in the present tense. Note too the “mourn” and not “have mourned” in Matthew 5:4, and “hunger” in verse 6. In like manner, the self-abasing word, “Who maketh thee to differ!” (1 Cor. 4:7) today: first from the unsaved; second from what we were before the new birth; and third from other Christians with less grace and gifts. Why, a sovereign God, and therefore you have nothing to boast of and no cause for self-glorying.

A word now upon the Spirit’s application of the Word unto the heart, and our task is completed. This is described in such a verse as, “For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance” (1 Thess. 1:5). That is very much more than having the mind informed or the emotions stirred, and something radically different from being deeply impressed by the preacher’s oratory, earnestness, etc. It is for the preaching of the Gospel to be accompanied by the supernatural operation of the Spirit, and the efficacious grace of God, so that souls are Divinely quickened, convicted, converted, delivered from the dominion of sin and Satan. When the Word is applied by the Spirit to a person, it acts like the entrance of a two-edged sword into his inner man, piercing, wounding, slaying his self-complacency and self-righteousness—as in the case of Saul of Tarsus (Rom. 7:9,10). This is the “demonstration of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:4), whereby He gives proof of the Truth by the effects produced in the individual to which it is sayingly applied, so that he has “much assurance”—i.e. he knows it is God’s Word because of the radical and permanent change wrought in him.

Now the child of God is in daily need of this gracious working of the Holy Spirit: to make the Word work “effectually” (1 Thess. 2:13) within his soul and truly regulate his life, so that he can thankfully acknowledge, “I will never forget Thy precepts: for with them Thou hast quickened me” (Ps. 119:93). For that quickening it is his duty and privilege to pray (verses 25, 37, 40, 88, 107, 149, etc.). It is a fervent request that he may be “renewed day by day” in the inner man (2 Cor. 4:16), that he may be “strengthened with might by His Spirit” (Eph. 3:16), that he may be revived and animated to go in the path of God’s commandments (Ps. 119:35). It is an earnest petition that his heart may be awed by a continual sense of God’s majesty, and melted by a realization of His goodness, so that he may see light in God’s light, recognizing the evil in things forbidden and the blessedness of the things enjoined. “Quicken Thou me” is a prayer for vitalizing grace, that he may be taught to profit (Isa. 48:17), for the increasing of his faith, the strengthening of his expectations, the firing of his zeal. It is equivalent to “draw me, we will run after Thee” (Song 1:4).