Month: January 2020

BIBLICAL GUIDE TO WORSHIP PRINCIPLES
Amos 5:23
Take away from me the noise of your songs; for I will not hear the melody of your viols.
James 4:4.
know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
1 John 2:15-17.
15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.17 And the world passes away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abides forever.
Exodus 32.17-29 (excerpts)
17 And when Joshua heard THE NOISE OF THE PEOPLE …18 And he said,…THE NOISE OF THEM THAT SING DO I HEAR. …19 And … he saw the calf, AND THE DANCING: and Moses’ anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. 26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, WHO IS ON THE LORD’S SIDE? let him come unto me. … 28 And there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.29 For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, even every man …that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day.

*All quotes from the King James Version (Public Domain)
JAMES & JOHN’S USE OF THE WORD: ‘’WORLD”.
1. The world is a word standing for the worldlings in the kingdom of darkness.
a. This means their songs, their lyrics, limericks, beat, and rhythm
b. This means their instruments not listed in Scripture
c. This means their loud needless amplification of same into the blast of excessive decibels.
d. This means their corrupt means of attracting and winning an audience
e. This means using entertainment dependent on worldly methods, not spiritual ones.
2. The music of the Hebrew worshippers had radically changed (see Amos 5.23 above).
a. Alignment with an idol changes everything in worship’s music and song:
b. The idols are instruments of the world, the dance rhythm/beat & emotion of worldlings;
c. The dress and undress (progressive immodesty) revealing by exposure or slovenliness.
d. Israel wanted to change worship because of doubt and distrust of traditional worship.
e. This change in music led to unseemly behaviour and sinfulness of their dance and nakedness.
f. The same Satanic delusion of Christian worship in a majority of churches causes the Spirit to be grieved and God departs to let the alternate deceiving spirits come in to simulate tee Spirit’s work and this started in the 1950s, continuing apace today using the world’s methods of attracting an audience with the same sensual rhythms used by sensual vocalists in the kingdom of darkness.
g. These churches rarely see even an awakening let alone conversions by illumination because God has left and man has taken over.
h. These churches (the increasing majority) in the ‘falling away’ of the last times (Matthew 24) rely on creation of excitement to unwittingly copy the inimitable atmosphere that the Holy Ghost brings in a small quiet voice (c. Elijah at Mt. Horeb escaping from Jezebel) 1 Kings 19:9-13
God is not loud, He works quietly in a reverent quiet congregation.
The average preacher and song leader seeks to awaken the interest of the audience so it will come back and support their unique sectarian movement, But only God can awaken and no man or minister can simulate. It will not be accomplished by instruments and songs using the rhythms and beats of the world.
Most new churches/missions/movements claiming to be unique fail to discern the invisible body of Christ by their sectarianism. Their uniqueness is quite frankly their misled humanism and pragmatism based on the 19th C fundamental emphasis of selecting special words/phrases or verses to be arbiters of truth to the neglect of the whole counsel of the whole Bible. It is tabooed private interpretation when this is done, making those words or passages superior to the rest of Scripture.
This allows each denomination to create its own hermeneutic or interpretative system of the Bible for its own biblical and doctrinal nuances, twisting the Word of God to its own destruction.
Thus following the humanist 18th C Age of Enlightenment the19th C pragmatist can twist the Scriptures to its own liking as it creates new unique doctrines. This had created over two thousand new breakaway splinter churches. 2 Peter 3:16.
Thus the 2,800 (Barratt 1977) separate church denominations, movements, and sects go each their own way and “every man did that which is right in his own eyes”- to the great detriment of the emaciated ‘body of Christ whose shepherding pastors will rarely feed the sheep (Ezekiel 13 & 34) as do not discern the body of Christ this eclipsed by their own misled uniqueness. For this reason, they are often sick and asleep (1 Corinthians 11) as their pulpits judgmentally advocate their sectarian bent instead of expounding Christ in the whole volume of the Book.
Western Christianity is fractious, judgmental, pragmatic, and thinks it has the right to freely use private interpretation of the Bible, tabooed by the apostles in Peter’s Epistle [ 2 Peter 1:20] and John in his Revelation [Revelation 22:18-19].
The result is that God the Father is very limited on how He can draw the lost to His Son, and He is obstructed by the false hopes of modern-day evangelists/ pastors who preach the gospel of affirmation, sacrament, decision, or tongues as evidence of the Spirit.
In their easy religion’s boast of numbers and statistics, they have in fact raised goats shown how to wear fleece instead of bringing lambs to birth. Assumptions of automated faith are at complete odds with the Scriptures.
Services are dominated by the bombastic stage performers with their flatteries and unctuous winsomeness. They act as gods and God often departs to leave the congregation in Ichabod.
God has called the preacher and missionary to preach Christ by expounding the Word of God through the foolishness of preaching without a private doctrinal agenda being foisted upon adulating pews.
Many get them to speak in unknown tongues never used on the day of Pentecost, rejected by the founder of modern-day Pentecostal at Azusa Street, Los Angeles 1906 as spiritism ending in witchcraft. Paul tabooed it for public assembly meetings. Unknown tongues (jargon aphasia of the pagans) was neither manifest at Caesarea, nor Ephesus or on the Day of Pentecost.
Only the corrupt drunken and gluttonous Corinthian church was it accepted until Paul banned it. 1 Corinthians 14.
I. Behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?…
II. and he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord…
III. and, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind … but the Lord was not in the wind…
IV. and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake…
V. and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire…
VI. and after the fire a still small voice…
behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?
 

AWAKENED BELIEVER’S ENLIGHTENMENT.

THE AWAKENED BELIEVER.
1. Reading the Word of God produces moral convictions and these grow until discomforting the reader. Why? “that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.” (Romans 7:11)

2. The moral law and the condemnation it produces in man’s conscience, is meant to bring the believer to the end of himself and distrust his own efforts, and the false hopes of his own faith, and his own religious creed/ sacrament.

3. Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity for saving grace. The eleven disciples were in hiding, except John, after the crucifixion. They were at the end of themselves in mortifying sorrow facing their cowardice, disbelief, and failure.

4. This was the opportunity for the risen Christ to change their worldly sorrow into godly sorrow of repentance. Concomitantly the Lord Jesus converted their double-mindedness into genuine godly faith enabling them to believe as the day star of the Spirit indwelled them.

5. To have an enlightened mind is inadequate to understand the spiritual side of the Bible’s sixty six volumes. It is the most unusual book ever written and one needs something more than an enlightened mind of curiosity and rational reason to understand its message.

6. Though enlightenment produces zealous interest, curiosity, and understanding of the Bible’s characters, history, and moral directives it is unable to give spiritual discernment of Christ’s grace and redemption. Independent reason will prevent the natural mind from fathoming the saga of grace from Genesis to Revelation.

7. Enlightenment is secretly driven by the Father’s magnetic attraction of the believer to His Son in the Scriptures. Though mistaken today for the new birth, it falls far short of one possessing eternal life. He/she needs the illumination of Christ’s regenerating Spirit.

8. Awakening and enlightenment are all part of the Father drawing the believer to His Son. (John 6)

9. The faith of the believer is not enlightened only his mind and doubts of the ambivalent will remain. His own faith it wavers all the time. He needs the gift of true faith by grace. Until then he is like the first twelve disciples to whom Jesus questioned for their lack of faith.

BIBLE REFERENCES.
Preconditions to illumination (conversion).
1. John 6:44. No man can come to me, EXCEPT THE FATHER which hath sent me DRAW HIM:
2. John 6:37. All that the FATHER GIVES ME shall come to me…
3. John 6. 45. Every man therefore that has HEARD, AND HAS LEARNED of the Father, comes unto me.
4. Jeremiah 29:13. And you shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart.

REPENTANCE 2 Corinthians 7: 8-10.
1. REPENTANCE is neither automatic nor worldly sorrow (being sorry for yourself). Sorrow of the world works death
2. WORLDLY sorrow is ‘but for a season’. The passing sorrow for one’s own consequences.
3. GODLY SORROW is the gift. You were made sorry after a godly manner. For godly sorrow works repentance to salvation

THE UNCONVERTED APOSTLES UNTIL HIS RESURRECTION.
1. Peter unconverted. Luke 22:32 .I have prayed for you that your faith fail not and when you are converted, strengthen your brethren.
2. Conversion by the washing of the blood purges the conscience. Hebrews 9:14. (Hebrews 10:22)
3. Natural faith cannot bring salvation. James 1:6-7. Natural faith is fickle.
4. Conversion by illumination comes alone by preaching, not water, wine or wafer.
a. 1 Corinthians 1:21. it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

** All scripture quoted from the KJV or King James Version (Public Domain).

AWAKENED BELIEVER’S ENLIGHTENMENT.

Abstinence part of Separation. (James 4.4)

Daniel 1:15. Cp. Abstinence of regenerated (illuminated) believers in James 4:4 in the New Testament. The common characteristic of true children of God from Abram onwards (Genesis 13: 5-9). Abram however, first had to get away from his Egyptian compromise and dishonesty before he could return to Bethel’s altar where he had been from the beginning. Then he called again on the Lord and could boldly take a stand for separation and pay the personal cost of holiness and usefulness. Afterwards the rewards were greater than all the losses: he was blessed with Christ’s grace (Melchizedech) [Genesis.14] then with faith & justification [Gen.15] then adopted by God the Father. [Genesis.17].

Abstinence part of Separation. (James 4.4)