Category: Historic Trends of Church

HOW SAINTS READ THE BIBLE (4)

Many saints today go hungry during their daily ‘Quiet Time’.

1) STARVATION RATIONS. They read the Word, but to little profit because they will not meditate upon what they read. Is it because they do not have the time? No! It is how they subordinate the time slot to their own prepared agenda.

2)a. ARE YOU A MARY OR A MARTHA? Which is more important: the word volume read, or hearing the voice of Him ‘the Word’ in the words? Which is paramount: covering the set chapter/s, or unhurriedly expecting the inner ‘Interpreter’s voice?

b. WAITING TO BE SERVED The saints who wait patiently at His table will certainly be fed with more than crumbs that are under the table. When such a reader readily pauses for the inner Teacher’s voice, sacrificing his own preconceived plan he becomes known to God as a WATCHER or WAITER.
Why eat only crumbs?

c. MARTHA SYNDROME Other believers fill their day’s timetable scheduling a small slot to Scripture in which time is of the essence. But often their priorities are amiss when they allow none for uninterrupted seclusion.

d. IS YOUR BUSINESS BUSY-NESS? Today’s reader mistakenly thinks only in goal completion. Targets are a good idea, but haste and clock watching are impediments to the saint.

e. DISTRACTIONS are common, more so today surrounded by technological devices galore. It takes effort to find space and privacy from the hubbub of the maddening crowd encroaching on the believers’ privacy. It also takes determination, perseverance and outright resistance to peer group and family pressured demands. It may also mean occasional sacrifice and self denial of food, sleep, and social media addiction.

BIBLE READERS’ INDIGESTION (4)

HOW SAINTS READ THE BIBLE (3)

1. Devotional reading on the run.
2. Rushed reading to cover a set number of chapters.
3. Pastor’s regimented reading the whole Bible in a year.
4. Allotting a time limit for reading
5. Momentarily glimpsing Bible verses in transit
6. Dipping into a promise box or randomly opening the Word for chance blessing.
7. Reading a daily devotional supplied by the church

REASONS FOR ALL SEVEN ON THE LIST.
1) ‘More haste less speed’ is the old proverb to remember.

2) Most of the listed actions are to save time for other more important priorities like eating, sleeping etc. The Bible says ‘it is vain to sit up late and rise up early.’ An hour before midnight is worth two hours after it. Sitting up late for leisure, work or pleasure will never allow meditation to him who has to rise early for work.

3) Short cuts are made for various reasons, but most are time saving factors for those who put Bible Reading on a low priority. Another reason is the reader himself does not understand much of the Bible except for historical narratives, as he has no indwelling ‘Interpreter’. He relies solely on his own knowledge and appreciation of literature. As such much of Scripture seems a mysterious enigma. As a result he wants to read the least amount possible, hoping that he will still acquire some credits of grace in the process.

4) Some think there is virtue in covering the Bible within one year. Others think that they will increase their faith if they force themselves to keep such a routine. Speedily accomplishing this goal may give comforting reassurance that they are pleasing God, but it is often only token gesture treatment of sacred write which impedes both meditation and intelligent cognizance of context.

5) The saints (sheep) do not need to be lectured, or compelled to follow a forced program of reading. They do not require forced feeding as their insatiable thirst for biblical milk, and hunger for the biblical meat will never cease. Down periods of temporary abstinence can cause dehydration and emaciation, but like the inner fire that burns low at this time “smoking flax he will not quench and a bruised read he will not break.”

http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/biblereading-dangers/ ‎

THE MYSTERIOUS POWER OF PRAYER.

THE MYSTERIOUS POWER OF PRAYER.
It is unfathomable, unstoppable, and a wave that rolls back the tide of evil. Nothing on earth can be compared. Military might is puny by comparison.

Yet it is the most neglected weapon of warfare. The blast is the Holy Ghost needing at least two detonators, but preferably three or more. ‘A 3 fold cord shall not be quickly broken.’

Choose a target permitted by the 20,000 PROMISES OF GOD’S IRREVOCABLE WORD. Each detonator must be single-eyed and joined to the others without wavering.

Rough, smooth, or even broken detonators are OK so long as they have been washed, purged and covered in pure unadulterated blood of the One Lamb.

THE MYSTERIOUS POWER OF PRAYER.

TIME FOR THE SAINTS TO FIND LOST WEAPONS

‘More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.’ (Lord Alfred Tennyson)
Is it time to lay aside our preoccupation with ideology and contrasting doctrines and again find the weapons of our warfare? (2 Corinthians 10.) You have been given the NAME and ITS OMNIPOTENT POWER to make “the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our God”.

Are our preachers are too busy locking up the armoury and hiding the key from praying saints? Are they too busy disqualifying such prayers as beyond the remit of the pew and beyond the reach of the promises or nullifying them to call them principles or just precedents?

If the unregenerate apostles on their one and only field trip (before Calvary and the life changing resurrection) could use HIS NAME to heal and deliver, how much more the saints who have the indwelling glory. They only had God WITH THEM until the day Christ rose from the dead.

The pulpit no longer believes in the operation of the Holy Ghost through the saint to CAST DOWN, PULL DOWN, and bring into captivity. I am not talking about the new demonology of Jessie Penn-Lewis pervading Christendom with its false binding, loosing, and cursing unwittingly using the paranormal.

I am speaking of using the 20,000 promises of God to reason with the mighty God who has limited himself to praying hands before he acts. He has no other hands but yours. Is it time to use them and take back the two edged sword? The dwindling free-world has been led astray by a corrupt Uncle Sam, pretending to be its Puritan leader. But unless you take up your weapons to do exploits for God both America and the Free World is lost to Islam.

It’s TIME TO STAND ON THE GAP AND LET THE GREAT INTERCESSOR MOVE THROUGH US TO ACCOMPLISH HIS WILL. It’s time to dump our pragmatic ideology misnamed doctrine and believe the promises of God in the Word and partake afresh of his nature. (2 Peter 1.)

Either that or we will go into captivity in your life-time.

TIME FOR THE SAINTS TO FIND LOST WEAPONS

ABRAHAM SHOWS THE ROAD MAP TO SAVING FAITH.

ABRAHAM SHOWS THE ROAD MAP TO SAVING FAITH.
(Genesis 12-17)
Abraham, the father of all those that believe, left behind him a road map to true faith. Anyone sick and tired of today’s free and easy self-will religion from the ‘come and get it’ evangelism of the West, can learn much from Abram’s saga. The eleven disciples of Jesus went through a similar sequence before they received the righteousness of faith on the first day of Christ’s rising from the dead.
1. (Genesis 11) Abram was arrested by the call of the Lord to seek. Him (Genesis 11-12)
2. .(Genesis 12) Abram as a pilgrim heard and learned of the Father’s promises. In his awakened state.
3. (Genesis 12) He discovered that his heart led him astray by its wilful deceit as he went down to Egypt.
4. (Genesis 12) He was convicted of his sin and returned to seek God at Bethel and rebuilt his commitment to seek the Lord.
5. (Genesis 12): He separated from his worldly argumentative kin, refusing to pitch his tent in the godless plain of Jordan, going up instead to Hebron in Mamre to live.
6. (Genesis 13):Abram leaves Hebron to rescue his nephew and against all odds defeats superior forces and retrieves Lot, his family and his goods. He has further discovered God is “with him”, though not yet eternally ‘within him’.
a. (God is ‘with’ all awakened unregenerate disciples while being drawn by the Father to the day of second birth). (Cp: John 6 ‘except the Father draw him’; & John 14: ‘with you’; ‘shall be in you’.)
7. (Genesis 14): Abram, after rescuing his captured nephew while returning to Hebron encounters Christ in the form of Melchisedek, who blesses him with His grace as God the Father further draws him.
8. (Genesis 15): In spite of the many promises God had given him over his conceiving a child in his old age by God, he did not yet believe them. In a short space of time since his encounter with Melchisedek he is soon captivated by grace and in a supernatural visitation he is enlightened and illuminated. He receives the “righteousness of faith” to believe the promise that his seed will number as the sand grains and the stars. His own faith had been double minded, fickle and inconstant.
a. (Cp: Luke 24: ‘eyes opened’; and John 20: ‘grace’ of Christ enables indwelling of the Spirit to regenerate them.)
9. (Genesis 15): Now justified by faith through grace his sins are no longer reckoned against him by God, his sins are covered and not imputed to him. Righteousness is instead is reckoned (imputed to him).
10. ( Genesis 17) Abram’s name is changed by God the Father, who adopts him as his own son. As such he is become the father of all them that believe in every nation, whether Jew or Gentile.
a. All regenerated disciples become sons and daughters of God the Father when His Spirit indwells them at the time of repentance and faith through grace.
brotherhohndavid.jdo@gmail.com

http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/?p=178

PRAYERLESSNESS OF OUR CHURCHES (4/7)

WHY FREE ORAL PRAYER MEETINGS DISAPPEARED
Jesus predicted the ‘falling away’, or the apostasy of our day at the ‘beginning of sorrows’ in the last days. The time has truly arrived and prayerlessness is part of it.
Nevertheless, most evangelism today has a rationale the very opposite of the saints from the 14th C through the early 19th C. The changes came with New England Theology’s evangelism of ‘easy religion’.
Today:-
(1) The surviving spirit of prayer in assemblies, is now on the verge of extinction
(2) The USA is largely to blame and the 2,000 new breakaway church denominations of the 19th C.
Among them was a new breed of rough and ready evangelists with the gift of the gab who were sensational stage performers who grabbed the quick admiration of the masses by their quick, easy, unconditional packages to heaven and the afterlife.
(a) D L Moody, Billy Sunday, Reuben Torrey and a host of ‘also rans’ who offered magical new ways to pray, a new notion of faith, and a fast track to glory. Handshake, stepping down the aisle, or merely moving one’s lips by muted acquiescence or affirmation after agreeing to the Gospel salesman in the pulpit. Their contemporary William James the Father of American Psychology was delighted that they had absorbed many of his new notions and definitions of faith (even though he was an agnostic who progressively destroyed radical real conversion).
(b) Conversion by spur of the moment decision, walking an aisle, handshake or affirmation replaced New Testament radical conversion of the Puritans and the Reformation
(3) A new breed of pseudo Christians has arisen which
[a] says there is no need to sorrowfully and prayerfully seek the gift of repentance
[b] says there is no need to seek the Lord first with all of the heart, soul and mind
[c] says there is no need to read the Scriptures beforehand while seeking Him
[d] says there is no need of radical old fashioned biblical repentance,
[e] says there is no need to wait for the coming of faith, it is already universally pre-existent
[f] says there is no need to seek the grace of faith, as grace comes through man’s own faith
[g] says there is no need for the prior spirit of prayer to arrest sinners and awaken them,
[h] says there is no need for church prayer meetings to verbally intercede aloud for the lost
[i] says there is no need any longer for God’s Spirit to give His inner witness or assurance
[j] Automation had arrived, with automatic birth with automatic faith and repentance,
[k] Acknowledging a few Bible verses or doctrines was now the new birth (regeneration)
[l] Parroting a ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ was now the new birth (being born again)
[m]. Acknowledging a few Bible verses and parroting a prayer was now the new birth
[n]. Mouthing a one word agreement to a plan of salvation was now the new birth
[o]. Do it yourself religion had arrived and was in vogue
{i} Everyone already has the ability to immediately access God by mental knowledge gained from the evangelist
{ii} There is no need to read the Scripture first, or to be like the Ethiopian eunuch; the twelve Galilean disciples; the Jewish audience at Pentecost; or the Gentile audience with Cornelius who all read or heard the Scriptures read well before new birth
{iii} There is no need to seek the Lord with all one’s mind, heart, strength and might automation had arrived, you can do it yourself, without minimum effort. Just come as you are for unconditional packaged gift of eternal life. Just do what the preacher says and presto you can have it! You can easily miss hell’s pain and gain heavenly joys when you die.
Come and GET IT! It is FREE!

SPECIAL NOTE FOR THE READER:
This article expresses the false attributes of easy-religion, easy-evangelism, easy-soul-winning, and quick-easy false conversions of the Western Church, particularly from the USA and its missionary extensions throughout the globe for well over a hundred years. Sadly it has captivated evangelical and fundamental Christendom, including the moral majority. Prophecy of Jesus and the prophets has been fulfilled.
Maranatha! Even so, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’

PRAYERLESSNESS OF OUR CHURCHES (4/7)

Decline of North Atlantic Caucasian Christians. (Part 3)

Decline of North Atlantic Caucasian Christians. (Part 3)
In the history of awakenings and revivals the spirit of prayer has been the key factor. Evangelism was successful when it was present on either side of the Atlantic or in the third world during the Modern Missionary Movement or the Golden Age of Evangelism. It cannot be simulated or produced by any method of man. The Great Intercessor in heaven alone is able to send it upon gathered saints in prayer.

Yet even when Wesley, Whitefield, Edwards, or Finney preached during the Great Awakenings, not one of them ever tried to convince a respondent to the Gospel that he or she was now a child of God. They always waited for God’s Spirit to give the assurance through His inner witness that He now indwelled the believer. They went to no ends to be patient and never tried to pre-empt the Spirit’s work.

They were loath to ever convince the new seeker with logic, Bible verses, or pressure that he was already regenerated. They let the seekers agonize in conviction without haste. They knew, as I did in New Guinea nearly 60 years ago, that when God moves in evangelism the Spirit’s work cannot be rushed or duplicated.
By all means quote the glorious promises to press upon the smitten sinners the hope, but the final work of regenerating conversion is alone the peculiar work of the Holy Ghost. To interrupt that work by impatience is to hinder the work of God with false hope.

Today, since the novel quick methods of the preacher as the sole persuader now makes a newborn Christian. These preachers of our day try to do it all themselves, using the Scriptures to make the respondent acknowledge then acquiesce to the overtures of God.

These evangelists are forced to do this themselves because the spirit of prayer is absent in their congregations, having abandoned the necessity of its presence in enabling intercessors to pray together for the lost. The old power house of the early church and that of true evangelism throughout church history has been forsaken.
The Plea of Our Great High Priest and Intercessor by the Prophet Joel.

“Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord…therefore also now, says the Lord, turn you even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning…And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God…who knows if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him; blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar…And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.”

    ( Joel 1:14; Joel 2: 12-17; Joel 2:28, 32.)

The spirit of prayer produces the unspeakable boldness and travail which shakes the place where they are gathered, and is the very catalyst that precipitates an outpoured awakening of the lost. Not until we open our churches again to free prayer and the free gathering of saints is there any hope of the return by the spirit of prayer. In the meantime we go through the motions, bypass the inner witness of the Spirit that comes through the new birth or radical, real conversion.

Decline of North Atlantic Caucasian Christians. (Part 3)


http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/the-decline-of-w…istianity-part-3/

DECLINE OF WHITE EU-UK-US CHRISTIANITY. (Part 2)

PRAYERLESSNESS OF OUR CHURCHES.
(New genre evangelism is an artificial substitute, without the spirit of prayer.)
INDOCTRINATION REPLACING REGENERATION
1. With all bibliolatry of the 19th C, one or two verses are pragmatically selected to use them as an arbiter to interpret the rest of the Bible. For example Romans 10:9 has become a magical fetish for quick, easy, unconditional salvation. It is twisted away from context and the overall total teachings of Paul in the rest of his epistle.
2. The method of bibliolatry is excessive reverence for a select phrase, verse, or passage to interpret all other related Scripture and pragmatically dispose of any counter balance. This rationale created over 2,000 new Christian denominations in the 19th C. Literalist and fundamental bibliolatry gave unprecedented rise to divisions within Christendom. Those divisions were based upon purist separatism and the worst form of sectarianism that continues to polarize and fracture the community of the saints.
3. The tragic irony was the further splits from the newly formed denomination leading in the end to many saints opting out of church attendance altogether as the disease of judgmental censoriousness consumed them.
4. Modern evangelists are wrongly compared to Finney, Edwards, Wesley and Whitefield, there is no similarity whatsoever between them and American evangelists of the late 19th, 20th, and 21st Century counterparts. The striking differences are:-
a. They do not have the spirit of prayer,
b. They instead manufacture a spirit of excitement
c. Excitement relies on certain musical tempo and lilt to stir the feelings;
d. Excitement grows on musical instruments for atmosphere
e. Excitement is dependent on vocal entertainment (called spiritual?);
f. Excitement relies on tension reducing humour to release emotions
g. Excitement thrives with a stage produced persuasive psychology
h. Excitement comes from skilfully manipulating mood and emotion
i. Excitement is to titillate expectancy with a note of urgency
j. The tools of excitement vary according to the needs of a congregation,
i. Traditional, contemporary, or modern audience
ii. Minors, teens, youth, adulthood, elderly;
k. All psychological methods to excite are poor substitutes to the spirit of prayer, which alone brings genuine awakening of the soul when the Gospel is preached; which alone is conducive to Holy Ghost illumination and regeneration of disciples. I.e. those who yet have not the indwelling Spirit, but only God’s presence temporarily with them while the Father patiently draws them to the Saviour and to conviction and repentance when they will receive the gift of faith (not to be confused with their own fickle freewill faith).

http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/?p=155

DECLINE OF NORTH ATLANTIC CAUCASIAN CHRISTIANS (Part 1)

DECLINE OF NORTH ATLANTIC CAUCASIAN CHRISTIANS (Part 1)
The West has much to learn from the strengths of Eastern quietude and reflectivity of mind? The Western man is presently distracted by high technology and excuses his frenetic preoccupation with internet media as multi-tasking and divergent thinking? Alas, even the saints are being temporarily blinded, until the Spirit brings them to their senses.

While arrogantly proud of its intellectualism the West forgets that as descendants of Japheth that settled in the isles, coasts and hinterlands of the North Atlantic, their intellectual advancement only came as God’s gift in fulfilment of Noah’s promise to Shem and his posterity down through the ages .

While they dwelt in the tent of Shem they were enlarged. When they became anti-Semitic the rationalism of intelligentsia took a downward path to lawlessness, civil wars and revolution. Revolution creates a war-mongering nation that was once law-abiding. This has happened, and is happening now on both sides of the Atlantic. It explains the present chaos between East and West. Once, those nations of Europe (both western and eastern) were advancing exponentially because they were god-fearing, promoted the Scriptures, and were friends of God’s scattered people: the Jews.

Now godforsaken in materialism and debauchery of mind, Western Christian nations in Europe, the United Kingdom have, like the USA on the other side of the Atlantic, become lawless. “If it were possible even the very elect would be deceived” and succumb. (Read: 2nd Thessalonians 2.) The days of Noah and Sodom are revisiting the planet to captivate nations abandoned by God.
NEXT POST: Part 2.

DECLINE OF NORTH ATLANTIC CAUCASIAN CHRISTIANS (Part 1)


http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/decline-of-white…christianspart-1/