Who is the Army of the Lord? Some would ask an even question why does the group running this website refer to itself as the Army of the Lord? This is a very good question because every Christian automatically should be a member of the Army of the Lord led by Christ. Every Christian is called to Christian service in whatever area of life God has put them in. This group is not the only Army of the Lord, or Army of God as some may call it. However, this particular Army of the Lord as we like to call ourselves is an organization of Paramilitary Christians engaged in Spiritual Combat! Our mission? To be a city on the hill in the once Godly land of America now occupied by the Masonic Government of 1787 (The same Government that went right back to tyrannical measures after it was formed). See the book Conspiracy in Philidelphia by Gary North to learn more. God has not called us to be lazy Christians, to be naysayers, to be wicked and unprofitable servants. God has given us the Faith of Jesus Christ which is the VICTORY that overcomes the world!

"When a person becomes a Christian, he voluntarily puts himself under God's law. If that person is a single male, unmarried, alone on an island, he is totally free under God. If he moves into a society where most people are not under God, government under God (Romans 13, II Peter 2) is for his protection from the unsaved. He may then join a church and voluntarily submit himself in some manner to a Pastor. If he takes a job, he has submitted voluntarily some part of his life to an employer. Never can a Christian submit so much of his liberty in Christ that he is forced to disobey God. I firmly believe that God's will is for a man to be under God's law, self-employed, and mature enough to be an elder spiritually in the church and not under tutors. (Galatians 4:1) It is in liberty that man is free to serve and worship the Lord best. Israel was under bondage in Egypt. This prevented their fulfillment of worship to God. When God and Israel were ready, God freed them. At various times and places God commanded His people to be set free. (Leviticus 25:10, Jeremiah 34:8, Exodus 21:2-5, Isaiah 58:6)

Freedom is seen as the Utopia in the New Testament. (Romans 8:21,1 Corinthians 8:9, Galatians 4:9, 5:1 13, James 1:25) Liberty carries with it responsibility. A small child is not set free in an unfenced yard because he is not responsible. Criminals are locked up because they are not responsible. When we willingly concede an area of responsibility to the government, we lose liberty and freedom that we had with that responsibility. Parents gave up responsibility for educating their children; now, they are fighting to get that responsibility back with the freedom to teach them. The church gave up in its responsibility to the poor, sick, needy, crippled and aged. Now we have welfare, food stamps, unemployment, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and hundreds of other projects killing us financially in addition to regulation of every area of life. In some cases, the church is trying to get the responsibility back and has found the freedom to do so is gone. God wants man to be free to obey and serve Him. Man enslaves himself to himself which results in slavery to others. (Proverbs 12:24) Of course, man claims that if all the regulatory laws we have in America today were repealed we would have anarchy.

That's not so. Anarchy is the refusal to obey any authority.  A godly man is under God's authority and commits no crime. Freedom and liberty to act is not anarchy. Self-discipline under God is not anarchy. Anarchy results when men reject God's government, and then, consequentially man's government. Man's government should always be in agreement with and subject to God's government. (Romans 13:1-7, 1 Peter 2) In this manner, man can best fulfill his obligation to God."

(From Sovereignty to Slavery by Dr. Everett Sileven, Chapter 5, Why God Wants Liberty for Man)

Have your ever asked yourself why God keeps a Christian in this horrid sinful world after he is saved? It is because God wants to build those Christians up as a holy people through sanctification. Christians are to be light of the world, salt of earth, that the world may glorify God by seeing our good works (Matthew 5:13-16). Do you want criminals like Hillary Clinton running an entire planet? God keeps Christians on this earth so that we might glorify him and do his will to overmatch and defeat Satan! God has created mankind in his image to fill the stars of heaven! God is training Christians for the Kingdom of Heaven right now here in this mortal world. 

"...I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;"-Genesis 22:17 

Christianity is a way of life! Christianity is not a defeatist religion of pre-tribulation rapture nihilism that creates a lifestyle irresponsible social behavior and spiritual laziness.

“I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”-John 17:15 

What we do in our lives matters, before an omnipresent and omniscient sovereign God! All lives matter, everything we are doing in life is recorded before God!

Christian's have the truth and are able to guide the unsaved, unregenerate world in the right direction toward the narrow path, way of the cross. We are Born Again Saints of the Most High God have the solutions to offer the unregenerate world just as Joseph did for Egypt!

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”-2 Timothy 1:7

God wants spiritual fruit not religious nuts, and God's Word the King James Bible gives us the guidance to be a light to the lost and dying word around us and to make people want to come to Christ.

God Want's You! He wants you to enlist in his army, do you have what it takes?

SEARCHING FOR MEANING IN A GODLESS, SELFISH WORLD?

"We live in the age of the individual; everything is geared towards the serving of self — our personality is god, and “independence” our reverence. But what have we become independent from? Our families, our friends, ourselves? And what have we chosen instead?

We’ve all been sold this story and dedicated our lives to it, creating more isolation, depression and despair than ever before. Adults are hopelessly dependent on intoxication and consumption, whilst children addicted to cyberspace demand the latest Apple product in fear of seeming un-cool. When enslaved to the impulse for indulgence, we fall prey to corporations, tempting us with their symbols of glamour, happiness and hope. We are put under their spell, vulnerable, open and weak – at the mercy of businesses and governments providing the illusion of leading us into prosperity!

It’s clear that we are not the ones benefiting from such a society, and now is the time to take steps to change things. It’s about seizing our power. It’s about fighting nightmares. It’s about taking control. We all want to live in a world where we have a say in how our lives should be. We all want to be heard, and to make an impact. Deep down, we all strive for connection."

(Chasing Dreams, Fighting Nightmares) 

We live in a world today where everything is only skin deep, a society lacking any real depth steeped in materialism. Old values that are innate to mankind are being debased and replaced by a set of values based on selfishness, greed, and unhealthy materialism where man is deduced to a mere animal. 

2 Timothy 3:1-5 says

"1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

² For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

³ Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

⁴ Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

⁵ Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away."

Across the country of America, myriads of people are searching for meaning in all the wrong places. The Church has not adequately responded to these problems. Gone are the days of revolutionaries like Charles Wesley, Johnathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John Wesley, William Booth. Men of God who would not compromise what the Word of God said and who also were more than ready to practice their Christianity with their deeds. God wants more than mere words. We often say we want the Kingdom of God, yet few Christians do anything to make it manifest before the unsaved world. Few are willing to be a true light unto the gentiles. In our world today on one extreme you have an unregenerate social gospel that has no Holy Spirit power, but on the extreme end you have men that preach the true Gospel of repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ (The New Birth), but they are inactive in the pure religion that is undefiled before God which 

is to "To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction" James 1:27, We need men of God who not only will not compromise the truth of the Biblical Gospel and also will prove that they truly believe that Gospel by their works. We need uncompromising men of God who will show their faith by their works. "Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy." We the Army of the Lord stand against both the effeminate Pietism and social irresponsibility of many conservative Christians/Judeo-Christians and the Judeo-Marxist Social Gospel heresy of the left.

In Ezekiel 3:18 God told his Prophet Ezekial "When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand." I wonder how many Christians if they were in Ezekiel's shoes with the rebellious nation of Israel, would have God requiring the blood their hand?

The Bible says in Ezekiel 33:11 "As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" The Character of God is for his Gospel to go forth and save as many souls as possible. God wants whole nations to turn to Christ like Ninevah did in the days of Jonah.

What are we doing to Make America Born Again? What are we doing to Make America Holy Again, Make America Saved Again, Make America Godly Again? Voting for an orange adulterer who is owned by greedy Christ-rejecting Jews? Or truly preaching Christ unto a lost and dying world? We ought to pray for our political leaders that they might be saved. We also ought to get involved in politics so more Christians can have a say in the direction that this Republic goes.

In Acts 20:26 Paul said, "I am pure from the blood of all men.” Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles, a Man of God filled with Holy Ghost Boldness. He preached unto the Roman Governor Felix, a man of high political office. The Bible states in Acts 24:25 "And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee." Governor Felix was under such conviction he almost was converted, we don't know if he ever got saved or not. But look at the Power of the Holy Ghost in that encounter.

In Luke 12:11 Jesus said we would be brought before "Magistrates" how many Christians are willing to reach out to their local magistrates? Historically Spirit-filled men of God turned nations to Christ, took on Kings, Governments and systems. St. Patrick of Ireland and the British Isles, Gregory the Illuminator who converted Armenia, and Savonarola are just a few examples. The Army of the Lord could be said to be a modern-day Salvation Army doctrinally purified through the furnace of God's fire.  Vessels of God's mercy meet for the Master's use. 

Rules to live by:

Romans 13:1 tells us "For there is no power but of God" 

Daniel 4:17 "the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men"

Acts 5:29 "We ought to obey God rather than men."

"Everything today in the church house is appealing to the flesh...everything is so superficial, so thin-skinned...people have no-route, no foundation, no soul..."

"Let me tell you something, there's a world outside that computer screen."

"If Satan can keep you completely engulfed in yourself...your world is not reality, your world is a screen"

"If you want to do yourself a favor, turn off your computer, and discover this world out there, there's rivers and creeks and mountains and places to go to, and things to do that will add something immensely to your life for you can go out there and look at this great creation that God made and look at the stars and heavens at night and watch the sun come up in the morning and watch it go down in the evening, watch the moon go up as it rises and you can say to yourself  my, my, my Lord God, you're a Big God. If he's a big enough God to make that he's a big enough God to save me."

(Pastor Charles Lawson, Topics That Are Not Preached Anymore)

IMPORTANT - Please Read Ending for Solution:

Written by Brother Stephen Israel

Christians, and people in general, are not to blindly submit to governmental rulers.

1. Romans 13 testifies that rulers have a standard to uphold. He is to be a "Minister of God", so there has to be biblical qualifications for any and all government official's to be in that specific role.

■ Can you think of any President that is qualified to be a Minister of God? There are none. Because every President (selected actor) is and has either been specifically a Freemason or of the Satanic occult.

2. A "Minister of God" is specifically commanded to protect God's people (Christian's), and to punish evildoers.

3. If government commits evil or compels us to participate in evil or something that goes against God than we should be compelled to disobey government.

■ God has a condition for governments: They are to be based on the Bible and its standards. Not the standards of man. According to the Holy Word, we don't need a politician or a businessman, we need a "Minister of God".

■ Satan has hijacked the governmental kingdoms of this world. If you study your Bible, especially end times theology, than you will see this.

■ Ultimately, God is sovereign, He is in control. He keeps Satan on a short leash. You may ask yourself, what is this world coming to? While we do have the free will to sin, and this world will get more wicked, just remember that "ultimately", this world is coming to God.___________________________________

Ultimately we cannot serve two masters. We must be delivered from darkness, and transplanted to the Kingdom of Christ Jesus.

■■■■SO WHAT'S THE SOLUTION?■■■■

2 Chronicles 7:14 - KJB"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." ( I understand the historical context of this verse. I know it's not about America, but there are many different layers to Scripture).

■ I want to be honest with you. We are not taking over this government or any government. Ultimately, our job and the solution is to share the Gospel, to grow the Church of believers, while being a light in this dark world (Matthew 28).

■ Since we are foreigners in this land (our home is in Heaven), and since governments have been hijacked by Satan (because they are no longer "Minister's of God"), THAN WE ARE OBLIGATED TO CREATE A SYSTEM WITHIN A SYSTEM.___________________________________

■■■■CONCLUSION■■■■

Did you know that we can legally create our own currency?

We don't have to be slaves to the Babylon system. Us as true Christians, we don't have to worry about eventually not being able to "buy or sell" (mark of the beast). We shouldn't have to worry! We should be "voluntarily" banding together, growing gardens, taking care of each other's needs, taking care of our communities, and opening church clinics to care for the sick; ALL WHILE STILL CARRYING OUT THE GREAT COMMISSION... even during the coming Great Tribulation.

This will conclude my rant. Thank you for reading, and I truly hope that this will be a blessing to you.

DISCLAIMER: EVOLA WAS NOT A CHRISTIAN BROTHER, BUT THIS QUOTE DESCRIBES THE RADICALISM WE OUGHT TO HAVE AS MEMBERS OF THE ARMY OF THE LORD!

A soldier in the Army of the Lord should be a radical Christian, a militant Christian, set apart from the world, sanctified! Leonard Ravenhill one time said, “A man who is intimate with God is not intimidated by man.” Ravenhill also said, "The opportunity of a lifetime needs to be seized during the lifetime of the opportunity." today in the Year of our Lord is the opportunity of a lifetime to restore the Christian foundation of our Republic. One radical act at a time! America is in total rebellion against God, Americans worship politicans over Jesus, Americans tolerate the murder of unborn babies, Americans tolerate open sodomy in their streets. The time has come to call our country to old-fashioned repentance.

"The world's greatest need is preaching preachers. The Gospel is our emancipation proclamation: let's take it to the slaves of sin."

Lester Roloff

"The only alternative to soul winning is disobedience to Christ."

Curtis Hutson

"A preacher must be both soldier and shepherd. He must nourish, defend, and teach; he must have teeth in his mouth, and be able to bite and fight." 

Martin Luther

Amazing video on the early Salvation Army!

EXCERPTED FROM CHAPTER 1 OF CATHERINE BOOTH'S AGGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY!

We Christians profess to possess in the Gospel of Christ a mighty lever which, rightly and universally applied, would lift the entire, burden of sin and misery from the shoulders, that is, from the souls, of our fellow-men--a panacea, we believe it to be, for all the moral and spiritual woes of humanity, and in curing their spiritual plagues we should go far to cure their physical plagues also. We all profess to believe this. Christians have professed to believe this for generations gone by, ever since the time of which we have been reading, and yet look at the world, look at so-called Christian England, in this end of the nineteenth century! The great majority of the nation utterly ignoring God, and not even making any pretence of remembering Him one day in the week. And then look at the rest of the world. I have frequently got so depressed with this view of things that I have felt as if my heart would break. I don't know how other Christians feel, but I can truly say that "rivers of water do often run down my eyes because men keep not His law," and because it seems to me that this dispensation, compared with what God intended it to be, has been, and still is, as great a failure as that which preceded it.

Now, I ask, how is this? I do not for a moment believe that this is in accordance with the purpose of God. Some people have a very convenient way of hiding behind God's purposes, and saying, `Oh! He will do His own will.' I wish He did! They say, `You know God's will is done after all.' I wish it were! He says it is not done, and over and over again laments the fact that it is not done. He wants it to be done, but it is NOT DONE! It is of no use to stand up and propound theories that are at variance with things as they are.' There has been a great deal too much of this, and it has had a very bad effect. The world is in this condition, and here is a system launched under such auspices, with such purposes, with such promises and with such prospects, and yet nearly nineteen hundred years have rolled away and here we are. How little has been done, comparatively. What a little alteration has been effected in the habits and dispositions of the race.

But some of you will say, `Well, but there is a good deal done.' Thank God for that. It would be sad if there were nothing done; but it looks like a drop in the ocean compared with what should have been done. Now I cannot accept any theory which so far reflects upon the love and goodness of God as to make Him to blame for this effeteness of Christianity, and, so far as my influence extends, I will not allow the responsibility and the blame of all this to be rolled back upon God who so loved the world that He gave His only Son to ignominy and death in order to redeem it. I do not believe it for a moment. I believe that the old arch-enemy has done in this dispensation what he did in former ones--so far circumvented the purposes of God, that he has succeeded in bringing about this state of things--in retarding the accomplishment of God's purposes and keeping the world thus largely under his own power and influence, and I believe he has succeeded in doing this, as he has succeeded always before, by DECEIVING GOD'S OWN PEOPLE. He has always done so. He has always got up a caricature of God's real thing, and the nearer he can get it to be like the original the more successful he is. He has succeeded in deceiving God's people: -- First:-AS TO THE STANDARD OF THEIR OWN RELIGIOUS LIFE.

And, Secondly, he has succeeded in deceiving them AS TO THEIR DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS TO THE WORLD.

He has succeeded, first, in deceiving them as to the standard of their own religious life. He has got the Church, nearly as a whole, to receive what I call an `Oh, wretched man that I am' religion! He has got them to lower the standard which Jesus Christ himself established in this Book--a standard, not only to be aimed at, but to be attained unto--a standard of victory over sin, the world, the flesh, and the Devil, real, living, reigning, triumphing, Christianity! Satan knew what was the secret of the great success of those early disciples. It was their whole-hearted devotion, their absorbing love to Christ, their utter abnegation of the world. It was their entire absorption in the salvation of their fellow men and the glory of their God. It was an enthusiastic religion that swallowed them up, and made them willing to become wanderers and vagabonds on the face of the earth--for His sake to dwell in dens and caves, to be torn asunder, and to be persecuted in every form.

It was this degree of devotion, before which Satan saw he had no chance. Such people as these, he knew, must ultimately subdue the world. It is not in human nature to stand before that kind of spirit, that amount of love and zeal, and if Christians had only gone on as they began long since, the glorious prophecy would have been fulfilled, "The kingdoms of this world" would have "become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ."

Therefore, the arch-enemy said, `What must I do? I shall be defeated after all. I shall lose my supremacy as the god of this world. What shall I do?' No use to bring in a gigantic system of error, which everybody will see to be error. Oh, dear no! That has never been Satan's way; but his plan has been to get hold of a good man here and there, who shall creep in, as the Apostle said, unawares, and preach another doctrine, and who shall deceive, if it were possible, the very elect. And he did it. He accomplished his design. He gradually lowered the standard of Christian life and character, and though, in every revival, God has raised it again to a certain extent, we have never got back thoroughly to the simplicity, purity, and devotion set before us in these Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles. And just in the degree that it has approximated thereto, in every age, Satan has got somebody to oppose and to show that this was too high a standard for human nature, altogether beyond us, and that, therefore, Christians must sit down and just be content to be "Oh wretched man that I am" people to the end of their days. He has got the Church into a condition that makes one, sometimes, positively ashamed to hear professing Christians talk, and ashamed also, that the world should hear them talk. I do not wonder at thoughtful, intelligent men being driven from such Christianity as this. It would have driven me off, if I had not known the power of godliness. I believe this kind of Christianity has made more infidels than all the infidel books ever written.

Yes, Satan knew that he must get Christians down from the high pinnacle of whole-hearted consecration to God. He knew that he had no chance till he tempted them down from that blessed vantage ground, and so he began to spread those false doctrines, to counteract which John wrote his epistles, for, before he died, he saw what was coming, and sounded down the ages--"Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." The Lord revive that doctrine! Help us afresh to put up the standard!

Oh! the great evil is, that dishonest-hearted people, because they feel it condemns them, lower the standard to their miserable experience. I said, when I was young, and I repeat it in my maturer years, that if it sent me to hell I would never pull it down. Oh! that God's people felt like that. There is the glorious standard put before us. The power is proffered, the conditions laid down, and we CAN all attain it if we will; but if we will not--for the sake of the children, and for generations yet unborn, do not let us drag it down, and try to make it meet our little, paltry, circumscribed experience. LET US KEEP IT UP. This is the way to get the world to look at it. Show the world a real, living, self-sacrificing, hard-working, toiling, triumphing religion, and the world will be influenced by it; but anything short of that they will turn round and spit upon.

Secondly:--Satan has deceived even those whom he could not succeed in getting to lower the standard of their own lives with respect to their duties and obligations to the world. I have been reading of late the New Testament with special reference to the aggressive spirit of Primitive Christianity, and it is wonderful what floods of light come upon you when you read the Bible with reference to any particular topic on which you are seeking for help. When God sees you are panting after the light, in order that you may use it, He pours it in upon you. It is an indispensable condition of receiving light that you are willing to follow it. People say they don't see this and that, no, because they do not wish to see. They are not willing to walk in it, and, therefore, they do not get it; but those who are willing to obey shall have all the light they want.

It seems to me that we come infinitely short of any right and rational idea of the aggressive spirit of the New Testament saints. Satan has got Christians to accept what I may call a namby-pamby, kid-glove kind of system of presenting the Gospel to people.

`Will they be so kind as to read this tract or book, or would they not like to hear this popular and eloquent preacher. They will be pleased with him quite apart from religion.' That is the sort of half-frightened, timid way of putting the truth before unconverted people, and of talking to them about the salvation of their souls. It seems to me this is utterly antagonistic and repugnant to the spirit of the early saints: "Go ye, and preach the Gospel to EVERY CREATURE"; and again the same idea--"Unto whom now I send thee." Look what is implied in these commissions. It seems to me that no people have ever yet fathomed the meaning of these two Divine commissions. I believe we of the Salvation Army have come nearer to it than any people that have ever preceded us. Look at them. Would it ever occur to you that the language meant, "Go and build chapels and churches "and invite the people to come in, and if they will "not, let them alone?" "GO YE." If you sent your servant to do something for you, and said, `Go and accomplish that piece of business for me.' You know what it would involve. You know that he must see certain persons; and run about the city to certain offices and banks and agents, involving a deal of trouble and sacrifice; but you have nothing to do with that. He is your servant. He is employed by you to do that business, and you simply commission him to `Go and do it.' What would you think if he went and took an office and sent out a number of circulars inviting your customers or clients to come and wait on his pleasure, and when they chose to come just to put your business before them? No, you would say, `Ridiculous.' Divesting our minds of all conventionalities and traditionalisms, what would the language mean? "Go ye!" To whom? "To every creature." Where am I to get at them? WHERE THEY ARE. "Every creature." There is the extent of your commission. Seek them out; run after them, wherever you can get at them. "Every creature "--wherever you find a creature that has a soul--there go and preach My Gospel to him. If I understand it, that is the meaning and the spirit of the commission.

And then again, to Paul he says, "Unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." They are asleep--go and wake them up. They do not see their danger. If they did, there would be no necessity for you to run after them. They are preoccupied. Open their eyes, and turn them round by your desperate earnestness and moral suasion and moral force; oh! it makes me tremble to think what a great deal one man can do for another! "Turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." How did Paul understand it? He says, "We persuade men." Do not rest content with just putting it before them, giving them gentle invitations, and then leaving them alone. He ran after them, poor things, and pulled them out of the fire. Take the bandage off their eyes which Satan has bound round them; knock and hammer and burn in, with the fire of the Holy Ghost, your words into their poor, hardened, darkened hearts, until they begin to realize that they are IN DANGER; that there is something amiss. Go after them. If I understand it, that is the spirit of the Apostles and of the early Christians; for we read that when they were scattered by persecution, they "went everywhere, preaching the word." The laity, the new converts, the young babes in Christ. It does not mean always in set discourses, and public assemblies, but they went after men and women, like ancient Israel--"Every man after his man," to try and win him for Christ.

Some people seem to think that the Apostles laid the foundations of all the churches. They are quite mistaken. Churches sprang up where the Apostles had never been. The Apostles went to visit and organize them after they had sprung up, as the result of the work of the early laymen and women going everywhere and preaching the Word. Oh! may the Lord shower upon us in this day the same spirit! We should build churches and chapels; we should invite the people to them; but do you think it is consistent with these two commissions, and with many others, that we should rest in this, when three parts of the population utterly ignore our invitations and take no notice whatever of our buildings and of our services? They will not come to us. That is an established fact. What is to be done? They have souls. You profess to believe that as much as I do, and that they must live for ever. Where are they going? What is to be done? Jesus Christ says, `Go after them.' When all the civil methods have failed; when the genteel invitations have failed; when one man says that he has married a wife, and another that he has bought a yoke of oxen, and another that he has bought a piece of land--then does the Master of the feast say, `The ungrateful wretches, let them alone?' "No." He says, "Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled." I will have guests, and if you can't get them in by civil measures, use military measures. Go and COMPEL them to come in. It seems to me that we want more of this determined aggressive spirit. Those of you who are right with God this afternoon--you want more of this spirit to thrust the truth upon the attention of your fellow men.

Oh! people say, you must be very careful, very judicious. You must not thrust religion down people's throats. Then, I say, you will never get it down. What! Am I to wait till an unconverted, godless man wants to be saved before I try to save him? He will never want to be saved till the death-rattle is in his throat. What! Am I to let my unconverted friends and acquaintances drift down quietly to damnation, and never tell them about their souls, until they say, `If you please, I want you to preach to me?' Is this anything like the spirit of early Christianity? No. Verily we must make them look--tear the bandages off, open their eyes, make them bear it, and if they run away from you in one place, meet them in another, and let them have no peace until they submit to God and get their souls saved. This is what Christianity ought to be doing in this land, and there are plenty of Christians to do it. Why, we might give the world such a time of it that they would get saved in very self defence, if we were only up and doing, and determined that they should have no peace in their sins. Where is our zeal for the Lord? We talk of Old Testament saints, but I would, we were all like David. Rivers of water ran down his eyes because men kept not the Law of his God. But you say, `We cannot all hold services.' Perhaps not.

Go as you like. Go as quietly and softly as the morning dew. Have meetings like the Friends if you like. ONLY DO IT. Don't let your relatives, and friends, and acquaintances die, and their blood be found on your skirts!!!

I shall never forget the agony depicted on the face of a young lady who once came to see me. My heart went out to her in pity. She told me her story. She said, I had a proud, ungodly father, and the Lord converted me three years before his death, and, from the very day of my conversion, I felt I ought to talk to him, and plead, and pray with him about his soul, but I could not muster up courage. I kept intending to do it, and intending to do it, until he was taken ill. It was a sudden and serious illness. He lost his mind, and died unsaved,' and she said, `I have never smiled since, and I think I never shall any more.' Don't be like that. Do it quietly, if you like; privately, if you like; but do it, and do it as if you felt the value of their souls, and as if you intended to save them, if by any possible means in your power it could be done.

I had been speaking in a town, in the West of England, on the subject of responsibility of Christians for the salvation of souls. The gentlemen with whom I was staying had winced a bit under the truth, and instead of taking it to heart in love, and making it the means of drawing him nearer to God, and enabling him to serve Him better, he said, `I thought you were rather hard on us this morning.' I said, `Did you? I should be very sorry to be harder on anybody than the Lord Jesus Christ would be.' He said, `You can push things to extremes, you know. You were talking about seeking souls, and making sacrifices. Now, you are aware that we build the chapels and churches, and pay the ministers, and if the people won't be saved, we can't help it.' (I think he had given pretty largely to a chapel in the town.) I said, It is very heartless and ungrateful of the people, I grant; but, my dear sir, you would not reason thus in any temporal matter. Suppose a plague were to break out in London, and suppose that the Board of Health were to meet and to appropriate all the hospitals and public buildings they could get to the treatment of those diseased, and suppose they were to issue proclamations to say that whoever would come to these buildings should be treated free of cost, and every care and kindness bestowed on them, and, moreover, that the treatment would certainly cure them; but, supposing the people were so blind to their own interests, so indifferent and besotted that they refused to come, and consequently, the plague was increasing and thousands dying, what would you in the provinces say? Would you say, `Well, the Board of Health have done what they could, and if the people will not go to be healed, they deserve to perish; let them alone?' No, you would say, `It is certainly very foolish and wicked of the people, but these men are in a superior position. They understand the matter. They know and are responsible for the consequences. What in the world are they going to do? Let the whole land be depopulated!' No! If the people will not come to them, they must go to the people, and force upon them the means of health, and insist that proper measures should be used for the suppression of the `plague.' It needed no application. He understood it, and I believe, by the Spirit of God, he was enabled to see his mistake, to take it home, and set to work to do something for perishing souls.

Men are preoccupied, and it is for us to go and force it upon their attention. Remember, you can do it. There is some one soul that you have more influence with than any other person on earth--some soul or souls. Are you doing all you can for their salvation? Your relatives, friends, and acquaintances are to be rescued. Thank God! we are rescuing the poor people all over the land by thousands. There they are, to be looked at, and talked with, and questioned--people rescued from the depths of sin, degradation, and woe--saved from the worst forms of crime and infamy; and, if He can do that, He can have your genteel friends, if only you will go to them desperately and determinedly. Take them lovingly by the button-hole, and say, `My dear friend, I never spoke to you closely, carefully, and prayerfully about your soul.' Let them see the tears in your eyes; or, if you cannot weep, let them hear the tears in your voice, and let them realize that you feel their danger, and are in distress for them. God will give His Holy Spirit, and they will be saved.

I was going to note that both texts imply opposition for, He adds, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world." As much as if He had said, `You will have need of my presence. Such aggressive, determined warfare as this will raise all earth and hell against you;' and then He says to Paul, "I will be with thee, delivering thee from the people and the Gentiles unto whom I send thee." Why would they need this? Because the Gentiles would soon be up in arms against him, and indeed they were.

Opposition! It is a bad sign for the Christianity of this day that it provokes so little opposition. If there were no other evidence of it being wrong, I should know it from that. When the Church and the world can jog along comfortably together, you may be sure there is something wrong. The world has not altered. Its spirit is exactly the same as it ever was, and if Christians were equally faithful and devoted to the Lord, and separated from the world, living so that their lives were a reproof to all ungodliness, the world would hate them as much as ever it did. It is the Church that has altered, not the world. You say, `We should be getting into endless turmoil.' Yes; "I came not to bring peace on the earth, but a sword." There would be uproar. Yes; and the Acts of the Apostles are full of stories of uproars. One uproar was so great that the Chief Captain had to get Paul over the shoulders of the people, lest he should have been torn in pieces. `What a commotion!' you say. Yes; and, bless God, if we had the like now we should have thousands of sinners saved.

'But,' you say, `I see what a very undignified position this would bring the Gospel into.' That depends on what sort of dignity you mean. You say, `We should always be getting into collision with the powers that be, and with the world, and what very unpleasant consequences would result.' Yes, dear friends, there always have been unpleasant consequences to the flesh, when people were following God and doing His will. `But,' you say, `wouldn't it be inconsistent with the dignity of the Gospel.' It depends from what standpoint you look at it. It depends upon what really constitutes the dignity of the Gospel. What does constitute the dignity of the Gospel? Is it human dignity, or is it Divine? Is it earthly, or is it heavenly dignity? It was a very undignified thing, looked at humanly, to die on a cross between two thieves. That was the most undignified thing ever done in this world, and yet, looked at on moral and spiritual grounds, it was the grandest spectacle that ever earth or heaven gazed upon, and methinks that the inhabitants of heaven stood still and looked over the battlements at that glorious, illustrious sufferer, as He hung there between heaven and earth. The Pharisees, I know, spat upon the humbled sufferer, and wagged their heads and said, "He saved others, himself He cannot save." Ah! but He was intent on saving others. That was the dignity of Almighty strength allying itself with human weakness, in order to raise it. It was the dignity of eternal wisdom shrouding itself in human ignorance, in order to enlighten it. It was the dignity of everlasting, unquenchable love, baring its bosom to suffer in the stead of its rebellious creature--man. Ah! it was incarnate God standing in the place of condemned, apostate man--the dignity of love! love! LOVE!

Oh, precious Saviour! save us from maligning Thy Gospel and Thy name by clothing it with our paltry notions of earthly dignity, and forgetting the dignity which crowned Thy sacred brow as Thou didst hang upon the cross! That is the dignity for us, and it will never suffer by any gentleman here carrying the Gospel into the back slums or alleys of any town or city in which be lives. That dignity will never suffer by any employer talking lovingly to his servant maid or errand boy, and looking into his eyes with tears of sympathy and love and trying to bring his soul to Jesus. That dignity will never suffer even though you should have to be dragged through the streets with a howling mob at your heels, like Jesus Christ, if you have gone into those streets for the souls of your fellow men and the glory of God. Though you should be tied to a stake, as were the martyrs of old, and surrounded by laughing and taunting fiends and their howling followers--that will be a dignity which shall be crowned in heaven, crowned with everlasting glory. If I understand it, that is the dignity of the Gospel--the dignity of love. I do not envy, I do not covet any other. I desire no other, --God is my witness--than the dignity of love.

Oh, friends! will you get this baptism of love! Then you will, like the Apostles, be willing to push your limbs into a basket, and so be let down by the wall, if need be, or suffer shipwreck, hunger, peril, nakedness, fire, or sword, or even go to the block itself, if thereby you may extend His kingdom and win souls for whom He shed His blood. The Lord fill us with this love and baptize us with this fire, and then the Gospel will arise and become glorious in the earth, and men will believe in us, and in it. They will feel its power, and they will go down under it by thousands, and, by the grace of God, they SHALL.

THE OFFICAL ARMY OF THE LORD HYMN!

RISE UP AND STAND!

PLAY THIS TUNE and sing the lyrics here:

Rise up and Stand, Ye soldiers of the Cross

We March as one, together to the front

Join in our song, for we are watched by a great cloud of witnesses

Who urge us on to keep the holy Faith

Join in our song, for we are watched by a great cloud of witnesses

Who urge us on to keep the holy Faith

Saved by his Grace and Born of His Spirit

Cleansed by Christ's Blood, clothed in His righteousness

Against the Powers, Princes and rulers of the darkness

We lead the fight to keep the holy faith!

Against the Powers, Princes and rulers of the darkness

We lead the fight to keep the holy faith!

Take up your arms, and put upon your helmet

Your war-belt on and fasten on your boots.

The final conflicts here, let’s rally to the warzone

We’re marching on, onward for the faith!

The final conflicts here, let’s rally to the warzone

We’re marching on, onward for the faith!

The earth at rest, the conflict now is over

The whole earth is filled with the Glory of Christ!

See down the Golden streets, the Heavenly City’s glistening

Rise up and Stand, see Jesus on the Throne!

See down the Golden streets, the Heavenly City’s glistening

Rise up and Stand, see Jesus on the Throne!

The Pilgrim's Formula to Save America!

PAGAN OATHS TO SECRET SOCIETIES ARE DESTROYING THE COUNTRY!

WHO WILL RISE UP?

“Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?”

Who will rise up against the world conspiracy of Sabbtean Jewish International finance? Against the anti-Christian hordes assaulting Western civilization and against the antichrist forces globally? JOIN THE ARMY OF THE LORD TODAY, STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE FORCES OF SATAN! TAKE BACK YOUR COMMUNITY, YOUR CITY, YOUR TOWN, YOUR COUNTY, YOUR COUNTRY! THIS IS NOT A CALL TO TERRORISM, BUT A CALL TO CIVIL RESISTANCE!

JOHN BUNYAN KNEW WHO (((THEY))) WERE

LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS CONSPIRACY IN THIS VIDEO HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPVbBPasjoU&t

BUY THE BOOK HERE

William Prynne (1600–1669) was an English lawyer, author, polemicist, political figure and a prominent Puritan opponent of church policy under Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud. Although Prynne’s views were Presbyterian, he became known in the 1640s as an Erastian, arguing for overall state control of religious matters. In 1656, a proposal was made in the Parliament of England to lift the 13th-century residency ban for Jews. This prompted Prynne to write A Short Demurrer to the Jewes Long Discontinued Barred Remitter into England, a remarkable legal treatise against the proposal. It was printed in 1656 shortly before the Whitehall Conference and became influential in strengthening the public opinion against the readmission of the Jews. In particular, Prynne strongly doubted that the Jews could be converted to Christianity if allowed back. The return of the Jews to England was heavily promoted by Manasseh ben Israel, the famous Portuguese rabbi and author, while Oliver Cromwell desired their conditional readmission. In the end, the Parliament did not support any such proposal. The Jews only came back to England, in large numbers, with the restoration monarchy of Charles II (1660–1685). In his treatise, Prynne was mostly reciting from what he considered the uncontested legal record of England and other countries. He cited the Jewish ruinous usury, forgery of coins and royal charters, general criminality, ritual murders, etc. as main reasons why the 1290 expulsion had happened and why the Jews should not be readmitted in his time. This publication will be of interest to anyone fascinated by Puritanism, Protestantism or Jewish history in particular and Revisionist history in general. ——— Softcover, 220 pages, indexed, #1014.

Revival’s Call to Radical Repentance

by Joshua Winslett

“Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways.” (Haggai 1:7)

In America, we want the “effects” of revival without the uncomfortable and life rearranging “causes” of revival. We all want to see new converts come to the truth, baptisms, churches growing, even churches being planted; we all want to see the effects of revival. However, we are unwilling to deeply and intimately evaluate the areas of our life that need to change and repent of the actions that initiate such a revival. Radical repentance – not just casually feeling sorry for some of our actions but radical, life rearranging changes in our lives – is one of the great causes of revival that we are unwilling to undertake. THERE IS NO REVIVAL WITHOUT RADICAL REPENTANCE.

When Paul was in Ephesus, the Lord made it evident that “a great door and effectual is opened unto me” and thus he desired to remained in Ephesus longer (1 Cor. 16:8-9), as long as it was clear that door was still effectually open. God did a great work in Ephesus; so great, that Paul ended up staying in Ephesus for three years, much longer that any other of his church establishment trips. The effects of sincere and authentic revival from this great effectual open door were profoundly evident during Paul’s three years of ministry there. Look at two aspects of the “radical repentance” that were exhibited in the revival in Ephesus.

First, there were many people who used to perform “curious arts”, or witchcraft, that believed and were converted to the truth. However, they didn’t just believe and decide we are not going to engage in our former sinful actions anymore. No, they took the “amazingly radical” step to bring all their former books of witchcraft (that were cumulatively worth over 50,000 pieces of silver) and burn those books (Acts 19:18-19). They didn’t take the “financially prudent” step to sell off all their former books and use the profits for good deeds and maybe even alms for the poor. No, they were so repulsed by their former sin that they could not stand to look at that token of their former life of unrepentance so much that they felt compelled to burn books that could have given them an amazing amount of financial gain. That is a radical step – a necessary radical step of repentance that is always evident in fervent revival.

Second, also in Ephesus, there were so many people converted to the worship of the true and living God that the graven image industry was going bankrupt in town (Acts 19:23-41). Demetrius, a silversmith who was essentially the local leader of the craftsmen trade union who (like many of his counterparts) had gotten rich from selling false idols in the temple of Diana, calls a meeting of the local tradesman. In his speech he says, “Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover, ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands: So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised and her magnificence destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth” (Acts 19:25-27). Let’s let the gravity of this radical repentance in Ephesus and all of Asia sink in. Not just in Ephesus, but in the entire region (not just in Starkville, but in the entire state of Mississippi for example), that so many people were being converted to the truth and displaying the radical repentance of totally forsaking the false idol worship of Diana that not only were the graven image craftsmen industry in the entire region almost out of a job but the temple of Diana was almost totally vacant for false worship! Wow, praise God!

No revival or repentance is complete until it revolutionizes our pocket book – until it radically changes our finances and spending habits. If we were to see authentic radical repentance in America, I believe our graven image industries would go out of business too. Now, I believe I’m safe in presuming that no one I know is going home at night and worshipping a little bronze statue of Diana or some other false god. But just because we do not worship silver images of a false gods, don’t foolishly think we do not worship graven images and false idols. There is no new thing under the sun, and be assured, we all worship false gods and graven images today as well; they have just taken a different form and shape in 21st century America than they did in 1st century Asia and Ephesus.

Worship means “to ascribe worth unto”. What do we “ascribe worth unto” in our lives? Furthermore, what do we “ascribe the MOST WORTH unto” in our lives? For the Christian, we should ascribe worth solely unto God because Christ alone is worthy to be praised. The first of the ten commandments of the Old Testament is: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. The second commandment flows out of the first: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” (Exod. 20:3-5). God is jealous over his glory, and since we have been redeemed and bought back from sin by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, God demands (he does not suggest, he demands) that he be sole source of worship and priority and praise in the lives of his redeemed. Anything short of that is sin. Anything that detracts or distracts us from total devotion to God in our lives in “another god” that has been taken hold in our heart. Jesus reaffirmed this requirement of total devotion to God in the greatest commandment of the New Testament: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment” (Matt. 22:37).

If there is anything in our lives that prevents us from single-hearted, single-souled, and single-minded devotion to Christ, God calls upon us to repent and purge that idol of another god from our hearts and then ultimately our lives. That’s why those converted from witchcraft in Ephesus couldn’t just keep those sinful books on their bookshelves but felt compelled to burn them, even to their own financial loss. They realized they had a sin in their lives, and that dross needed to burned away by fire. If we examine our lives and see that there is something that is detracting us from total devotion to Christ, it is an idol that needs to be purged away. If we view that thing as having “too much value or worth” to us to get rid of it, then we have just ascribed that thing as of “more worth than Christ”.  It has too much worth to me to part with this thing. That is the definition of false worship (attributing false worth to something other than God), idolatry, and willful breaking of the first and greatest commandment.

So do we have idols in America today? Let me ask you this and you can answer honestly for yourself. Is there something that God’s people place as a greater priority than God and God’s house in this world? I believe we all know the answer is a resounding “yes”. The most popular sport in America is football and the National Football League has almost all their games on what day? Sunday, the Lord’s day. Every week there are probably 14 NFL games on Sunday and with each of those stadiums holding at least 50,000 (with many holding much more); that is at least 700,000 people that spend their entire Lord’s day valuing grown men carry and throw a football as of “greater worth” than ascribing worth to God in worship on Sunday. NASCAR has all their top-tier races on Sunday, PGA golf tournaments end on Sunday, many NBA basketball games are on Sunday as well, and many other examples could be given. Not only do well over 1 million people attend these various sporting events on any given Sunday, but they plan their whole schedules around these events. Those devoted fans (literally “fanatics”) wake up early to prepare food for a tailgate, get to the stadium early to see the warmups, are willing to stay late if the game goes into overtime, and then can’t wait to rehash everything that happened with their friends all throughout the next week. All the meanwhile, many of those same people who might attend church, are unwilling to wake up early to prepare food for church, sleep late and either don’t go to church or get their horribly late, complain if the sermon goes to 12:01, and don’t discuss the service with anyone else after walking out the church doors. While our churches are almost empty, stadiums are full and have a waiting list for tickets (people who want to be there at a ball game but haven’t had a chance to buy tickets); our churches have people come in late, leave early, and sleep through service, which those same ones when they attend a sporting event wake up early, stay late, and have an excitement about the proceedings that causes them to shout with joy during the game. We should have that same excitement about the service of God and our Lord’s day worship should be the highlight of our week to where it occupies our conversation our entire week.

Now on to the merchandise. Each of these sports teams, sells merchandise and clothes with their team’s logo and even sell jerseys for their most popular players. The same people who are unwilling to give graciously to care for the needs of the church are willing to pay $100 each for the jerseys of their favorite players and their entire wardrobe has some logo of their favorite team. We put posters of our favorite players on our walls (does that seem like a graven image to you yet?).

It’s evident that these stadiums are our modern-day temples of Diana where false gods are worshipped by millions of people every Lord’s day. However, those stadiums are not just used for sporting events they are used for music concerts and many other idolatrous activities in our culture. In music, we spend money to have the latest greatest songs for our favorite artists, and know all the words to those songs and are willing to belt out those secular songs any time. However, in our song service in church, we don’t sing at all or yawn through it or sing in a lackluster way to the Lord. People go to a concert and get there early and stay late to be able to just see their favorite singer in person or get a picture with them but that excitement wears off in regards to meeting the Lord every Sunday in worship. Then we also put posters of our favorite singers on our walls. Do you realize when we put a poster on our wall of one of these people, that is a lifeless representation or image of real person that we are ascribing worth to? Instead of the image of our false gods being graven into a metal (graven images), now they are just printed in color on paper and hung on our walls.

Have you ever heard someone say that a sports or music or movie person that I have as a poster on my wall, that they are my “idol” – that I look up to his person and I aspire to be like that person one day? Do you realize that this “hidden idolatry” has gotten so ingrained in our culture that we are not only following all the attributes of idol worship in our actions, putting up posters on our walls of others who we “idolize” but it’s so commonplace and we are totally comfortable even calling a famous person our “idol” and that we “idolize” them? Then we cement our idolatry by spending our money to go see them in person, to buy all their gear (as graven images).

The most popular music competition in our country for almost two decades is even called “American Idol”. Even good sincere Christians watch American Idol every week and don’t even consider that we are literally watching a show claiming to be crowning a singing and music idol and that is totally normal to us. The idolatry of the music industry is just so ingrained in our culture that we don’t even bat an eye anymore. The same could be said of not just sports and music, but movies and many other areas in our American culture.

Now, let me insert this disclaimer. I’m not trying to say that all sports, music, movies, and entertainment are evil. They are fine and lawful in moderation and when put in their proper place. However, I hope you can clearly see that many of us have not handled these areas of our life in moderation. The issue where something rises to being an idol is if we ascribe it more worth that God – then it has clearly become a false god and idol. If we read every new book by our favorite author but never open the word of God to read scripture, what does that say about our priorities? If we plan all our weekend around a sporting event, but neglect public worship at the Lord’s house, that reflects a problem in our priorities. I would implore you to just measure how we engage in these things of the world based on the lens of God’s word and take the Lord’s admonition to “Consider your ways”. Then I believe you will have appropriate clarity for how we can still engage in some of these things in a lawful way, but not violate our first priority to Christ that causes these things to be a sin.

Now, I’m not presenting all of this idolatry in the American culture to just be a curmudgeon. First, I want us to consider the pervasive scope of the idolatry that’s all around us even if we could not see it before. Mainly, with this in mind I want us to consider what the equivalent of radical repentance that we see in Ephesus in Acts 19 would possibly look like in America so we can understand the magnitude of what this radical repentance looks like in our lives. Based on the powerful moving and conviction of the Holy Spirit, in all of Ephesus and almost all of Asia so many people were being converted to the truth and joining the church that the places of the idolatrous worship becoming totally vacant and the niche industry for false grave images in those cities were going bankrupt. Could you image a radical repentance and revival from our idol worship in America that our massive stadiums on each Lord’s day were vacant and people were instead worshipping the Lord? The football teams would also soon be on the verge of bankruptcy because not only were they losing tickets sales but they would also loose merchandise and apparel sales. The business that made all their money selling logoed sports goods or your favorite musician would be going bankrupt. I doubt musicians would have many nationwide tours if people quit attending those concerts due to a desire to invest themselves in the kingdom of God.

Musicians who only engage in vulgar sinful lyrics and themes would be eliminated because their albums would not sell at all. Movies that portrayed sinful themes would be a bust at the box office and soon if no one bought those movies, these wicked movies would quit being produced. The bright lights of Las Vegas, literally known as Sin City, would go out because no one would travel there to partake in the filth that city offers to the flesh. Pornographic websites would be taken down and Playboy magazine would go out of business, and so many other examples could be given.

Could you imagine the economic impact and shift that sincere radical repentance and forsaking these idols in our lives would have on our American economy? No revival or repentance is complete until it affects your pocket book, until it changes how you spend your money. Entire economies can be impacted when God’s people consider their ways and repent, just like we see in Ephesus. If God’s people really took the first commandment seriously and make a commitment to have no other gods before the Lord, that would drastically shift how business is done in this country and I dare say our modern-day temples of Diana and graven images craftsmen would both go out of business.

In Haggai 1, the prophet calls upon Judah to “Consider your ways” and repent (Hag. 1:5&7). These were Jews (God’s people) that were not openly worshipping false idols of Molech and Baal like their forefathers. No, these were the good Jews who left the false gods of Babylon to come back to Jerusalem to rebuild God’s house. They were devoted to Jehovah God, not false gods. But unfortunately, the work of rebuilding God’s house was met with opposition and God’s house lay dormant for over 15 years. However, God cuts to the heart of the problem with this generation of God’s people – your priorities have become misaligned. In other words, just because you are not worshipping some graven image false god does not mean that you are not engaging in idolatry. What was the idol these people were “ascribing the most worth to” instead of Jehovah God? Their own houses and lives. “Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste?” (Hag. 1:4) What had become more important than God’s house for these Jews? Their own houses and the things of their own life. They were more than happy to add on additional rooms to their own houses, improve their own roofs, renovate their own kitchens and bathrooms, but all the time the house of God laid in waste and ruin.

These people of God had gotten their priorities so misaligned they legitimately thought it was fine to place their own houses and their own lives as of greater importance than the house of God. The application today is quite fitting for our American culture. Our churches are generally in ruin and disrepair. Just like this generation of Jews, we “sow much and bring in little”; we “eat but don’t have enough”; we “drink but are not filled”; we “are clothed, but there is none warm” (Hag. 1:6). We have an abundance of all these things but are still not satisfied with our abundance. When they sowed much and looked for much, God “did blow upon it” and they came home with very little. That’s sounds kind of mean of the Lord. Why did he blow upon all their hard work? “Because of mine house that is waste (in ruin), and ye run every man unto his own house.” (Hag. 1:9)

In a spiritual application in the church, I believe we could say that our churches have suffered from a lack of increase, a lack of revival, a spiritual drought. I believe the same root cause could be identified in our culture today as well – we’ve placed a greater priority on our own houses and our own lives than on God’s house and the church. And thus, just like these Jews: “Therefore, the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon the ground which brings forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labor of the hands.” (Hag. 1:10-11) What a sobering passage. Because of their prioritization of themselves over God, the Lord called for a drought upon the land. Notice everything that was affected by this drought: the land, the mountains, the corn, the new wine, the oil, the ground, the cattle, and especially notice “upon men” and “upon all the labor of the hands”. This was not just a drought of rain; this was a drought that was placed “upon men” and upon all the labor of the hands of these men who were not willing to obey the first commandment of total devotion to God. Speaking candidly, I believe the church has seen a severe drought upon our land in the church; upon our corn, wine and oil in the church; a drought upon our men; and a drought upon all the labor of our hands. We see it with a general apathy for spiritual things, for complacency and apathy in church attendance, which leads to the ultimate effects of a drought, which is death as our churches close their doors.

Simply put, placing God on the backburner in our lives is unacceptable in God’s eyes. God requires total devotion to him. He will not be content to ride in the passenger seat as you drive the course of your life. He will not be the underwriter to the building of your own house when we neglect the building of God’s house.  Furthermore, we see the effects in our lives when we do not place the house of God as the priority in our lives: drought, decline, and death.

What is the remedy for this severe drought of spiritual revival from God? “Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain and bring wood and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord.” (Hag. 1:7-8) Get your priorities straight. There’s nothing wrong with having a nice house, but not if it causes your priorities to be shifted to where the house of God lies in waste. God simply requires our service to God, his house, and his kingdom to take priority, to be number one in our lives: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all things shall be added unto you.” (Matt. 6:33)

This message to consider their ways resonated with its hearers and they repented and got back to the priority work they should have been doing all along: “Then Zerubbabel and Joshua, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him, and the people did fear the Lord… And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel and Joshua and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the Lord of hosts.” (Hag. 1:12-14) God “stirred up the spirit” of the leaders and of all the people to begin again the work they had neglected. All revival and repentance will come from God-anointed preaching in power and demonstration of the Spirit; a call in that preaching to repent and consider our ways; the Lord stirring up the spirit of the people, revealing and convicting them of their sins; and then the people actually repenting and changing their actions in obedience to God’s word.

What’s really neat about this occasion is that Zerubbabel and the people had been under a government cease and desist order to not build the temple for many years. They had allowed that order to detract them from the work at hand. They disobeyed the current ruling of the Persian king and began the work back anyway. Then the local governor petitioned the king of Persia again to stop their work, but after further review of their governmental records, he found the original decree of Cyrus that not only authorized the work but gave governmental funds to support the work (See Ezra 4-6). So Zerubbabel and the people were convicted and stirred up to begin the work back, even though the government was in opposition of the work. But God honored that obedience, and not only was the king’s heart turned to them and they were allowed to begin back building, but he decreed for the government to pay for all the construction costs, to pay for all the animals for sacrifices and to return all the vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had removed from the temple. Wow! God not only blessed their work, but he used the Persian government to fund the construction costs and sacrifices for the work. They experienced a revival in the work of building up God’s house that was in disrepair and God clearly blessed that work with revival. Certainly, we need that type of God sent and God blessed revival in the house of the Lord, in the church here today.

I believe we think we want revival in America. We definitely want the effects of revival – new converts, baptisms, larger crowds, new churches planted, and deeper devotion and spirituality. But the real question is are we willing to allow the life rearranging and priority shifting work of radical repentance that is the cause of revival? God has called upon his people to repent all throughout time. God is never the problem in revival. God’s people are always the problem in the equation. Historically, God’s people have not wanted to submit totally and fully to the authority of God, to allow him to dictate and arrange our lives totally in accordance with his word, to repent and follow Christ. Instead, we want to do our own thing, coddle our own private idols, run to our own house, and complain that God does not send revival. No, revival occurs when radical repentance invades and renovates our lives. That radical repentance begins with our sincere evaluation of our lives and shortcomings compared to the standard of God’s word. God still calls to his people today who pray for revival: “Consider your ways and repent.”

Revival’s Call to Radical Repentance – Marchtozion.com

Christian Revivals

by Joshua Winslett

Christian revivals generally have not come through positive thinking, trendiness, political movements, or Jesus flavored motivational speeches. Even social change itself has not been a catalyst for religious revival. A gospel centered revival usually brings social change, not the other way around. With this said, revivals have generally come through humble Bible based, God honoring preaching.

Biblically speaking, the number of disciples being multiplied and strengthened was directly connected to the word of God being increased, and churches being established in the faith. See Acts 6:7 and 16:5. Historically, most revivals have had a few common traits. The evangelistic preaching that has had the longest lasting effects throughout history all seemed to have five common principles, 1) God is sovereign and Holy, 2) Man is depraved and at enmity against God, 3) God’s judgment is just, 4) God is sovereign in salvation, 5) God’s mercy is the only hope and consolation for sinners.

A person should remember that it is only by God’s blessing that individual, or collective revival is found. The Lord alone adds and gives increase (Acts 2:47, 1 Corinthians 3:6). Yet the same God who alone holds the sovereignty over life’s blessings is the same God who promises reaping, if we faint not (Galatians 6:9). The blessings of the Lord certainly makes a person rich, but he often sends those blessings to the hand of the diligent (Proverbs 10:4,22). It is generally against the norm to find any kind of reviving harvest without someone properly planting and watering. We tend to only harvest in the fields to which we have labored. So we are to diligently, and patiently, trust in God’s design while following his pattern. All avenues of revival other than the Biblical model will always create AstroTurf growth.

The message of the gospel, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is the sole means through which God has designed his kingdom to find revival. It alone brings life and immortality to light (2 Timothy 2:10). It alone is the power of God to them which are saved (1 Corinthians 1:18). Whether it is from the pulpit or personal evangelism, the only growth of substance will be found through building correctly. The gospel needs not to be rebranded, it just needs to be correctly and proportionally preached, while also being faithfully obeyed.

This can all be summed up by the advice passed down to me by a mentor in the ministry, “If you preach it, they will come.”

1 Corinthians 3:11-13 – “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.”

Originally published October 2016

Christian Revivals – Marchtozion.com

John Knox on the Responsibilities of the “Lesser Magistrate”

“Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way.” Psalm 2:12a

— Written by Dr. Marcus J. Serven

One of the practical applications that John Knox (c.1514-1572), the famous Scottish Reformer, developed in his theology was the Bible’s teaching on the lesser magistrate. Knox believed that all magistrates serve at God’s good pleasure and therefore are responsible to God for upholding and enforcing his holy law (Rom. 13:1-4; 1 Pet. 2:13-14). Moreover, the subjects of magistrates are obligated to honor and support them as they engage in their duties. Knox understood that all magistrates, however, would be held accountable by God when they disobey His holy Law (Ps. 2:10-12; Jer. 37:1-21). He argues,

“…for it is a thing more than certain, that whatsoever God required of the civil magistrate in Israel or Judah, concerning the observation of true religion during the time of the law, the same does he require of lawful magistrates professing Christ Jesus in the time of the gospel, as the Holy Ghost has taught us by the mouth of David, saying, Psalm 2, ‘Be learned you that judge the earth. Kiss the Son, lest that the Lord wax angry, and that ye perish from the way.’ This admonition did not extend to the judges under the law only, but also does include all such as be promoted to honours in the time of the gospel, when Christ Jesus does reign and fight in his spiritual kingdom, whose enemies in the Psalm are first most sharply taxed, their fury expressed, and vanity mocked; and then are the kings and judges, who think themselves free from all law and obedience, commanded to serve the Eternal in fear, to rejoice before him in trembling, to kiss the Son (that is, to give unto him most humble obedience): whereof it is evident that the rulers, magistrates, and judges, now in Christ’s kingdom, are no less bound to obedience unto God, than were those under the law.”

Knox, “The Appellation” in Selected Writings of John Knox, 499-500

Thus, all magistrates are not to govern arbitrarily, nor are they free to establish their own laws according to their own pleasure. They must uphold the righteous standard that has been instituted by God himself, or suffer His judgements. In essence, the Bible teaches that there is a “higher law” (i.e. God’s Law) that is above any of the laws of men which may have been legislated under the magistrate’s authority (Exod. 20:1-17 ; Deut. 5:6-21; Matt. 22:34-40). This “higher law” regulates the activities of the magistrate as well as the activities of the people. All are responsible to God; both the magistrates and the people. But the magistrate bears a special responsibility before God to uphold a righteous standard. With this concept in mind, Knox addresses the magistrates with these persuasive words,

Consider, my lords, that you are powers ordained by God (as before is declared), and therefore does the reformation of religion, and the defense of such as unjustly are oppressed, appertain to your charge and care, which thing shall the law of God, universally given to be kept of all men, most evidently declare; which is my last and most assured reason, why, I say, you ought to remove from honours and punish with death such as God has condemned by his own mouth.”

Knox, “The Appellation” in Selected Writings of John Knox, 508

Therefore, Knox argues that evil and tyrannical magistrates—whether they are kings, queens, princes, nobles, or judges—in certain select circumstances, can be resisted by the citizenry. The people are not free to wantonly rebel against unrighteous magistrates. They can, however, after a lengthy season of prayer and exemplary patience remove unrighteous magistrates from their office as long as they are led by duly established “lesser magistrates” (i.e. Knox calls this the doctrine of “interposition”). In brief, only these “lesser magistrates” can lead the people in removing the “greater magistrates.” In the face of persistent evil activity, Knox insisted that it actually was the duty of godly citizens to remove evil and tyrannical leaders. As well, the lesser magistrates had the responsibility (or duty) of leading the people in removing unrighteous greater magistrates. Under these parameters the action of removing an unrighteous magistrate is not wanton rebellion, but it is a godly response to wickedness and tyranny. Dr. Joseph Morecraft summarizes this position,

Knox’s major contribution to the Reformation and to Western Civilization was his teaching on the legitimacy of resistance against tyranny, including the use of armed force by the citizenry, led by a lesser magistrate, against a tyrannical or idolatrous head of state, after all others efforts have failed. Christian citizens and lesser magistrates have the duty to remove tyrants from office. Moreover, armed resistance is justifiable, according to Knox, only if two preconditions have been met: “the first of which was the trying of other means, including prayer and patience. The second condition was that armed resistance must be led by legitimate lesser magistrates…” Knox cited Jeremiah 37 as the scriptural basis for ministers advocating resistance against tyrannical authorities. Knox was not a revolutionary, however, as his life and sermons prove. Although he believed that resistance to tyranny was every Christian’s duty, he could also say, “We mean neyther seditions, neyther yit rebellion against any just and lauchfull authorities, but onlie the advancement of Christes religion, and the liberties of this poore Realme.”

Morecraft, “Calvin’s Influence on Scotland” in John Calvin: Man of the Millennium, 270-271

It was this kind of practical application of the Bible’s teaching on resisting tyrannical rulers that resulted in the rapid progress of liberty throughout the Western world. Evil and tyrannical governments were resisted and thrown off in Scotland, England, France, Germany, Holland, and at a later time in the American Colonies during the Revolutionary War. Other theologians who followed after John Knox would further develop the details of his political theology, but the original seed came from Knox as he struggled with how to bring religious liberty to Scotland, his own beloved country.

One example of Knox’s theology of resistance to tyrants can be found in his personal relationship with Mary, Queen of Scots. Prior to Mary’s arrival in Scotland as the new regent, the Scottish Parliament in 1560 determined to adopt the Scots Confession which rejected Roman Catholicism and replaced it with the Reformed faith. As a result, the observance of the Roman Catholic Mass was condemned throughout the country. Those who led the Mass were placed under the penalty of death, and those who participated in it were liable to imprisonment. Queen Mary had been raised in France as a dedicated Roman Catholic. When she returned to Scotland in 1561, some in the Scottish Parliament granted her the concession to hold a private Mass led by her own personal Chaplain in Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh. Others in the Scottish Parliament strongly disapproved of this concession and threatened Queen Mary with arrest. In the midst of this turmoil, since John Knox had preached against her holding a private Mass, Queen Mary invited Knox to give an answer for his perceived rebellious attitude. These proved to be stormy sessions, but they served to clarify Knox’s theology and they forced Mary to come to grips with the reality that many of her subjects had an extreme distaste toward her practice of observing Mass in her own private quarters. Many Scots agreed with Knox’s view that the Mass was idolatrous, and they were offended that their sovereign—Mary, Queen of Scots—would participate in such a practice. They also worried that Mary would seek to reimpose Roman Catholicism upon Scotland, and that they would be forced to worship as she did. Many of the Scots had at that time resolved to worship God only according to the teachings of the Bible, and not by the traditions of men. Dr. Richard Greaves explains,

In September 1561 Mary inquired of him if subjects could resist their sovereigns. Knox’s reply implied the existence of a covenant between God and temporal princes. If the latter exceeded the bounds imposed on them by God, subjects had to disobey because of their duty to obey God. Princes who persecuted Protestants were, in their blind zeal, subject to a mad frenzy, and had to be restrained by their subjects until their minds became sober…He repeated his beliefs to Mary again in 1563, but explicitly warned her that idolaters could be lawfully executed by believers…Knox also called attention to the mutual covenant between sovereigns and subjects, and clearly affirmed the right of subjects to disobey if sovereigns did not fulfill their obligations, which he summarized as protection and defense against evil doers. “Consider…what it is that ye aught to do unto them by mutual contract. They are bound to obey you, and that not but in God. Ye are bound to keep laws unto them. Ye crave of them service: they crave of you protection and defense against wicked doers.” If Mary failed to fulfill her duty to her subjects, she would not receive their full obedience. On that note the interview concluded.

Greaves, Theology & Revolution in the Scottish Reformation, 141-142

Hence, we can see how the theology of John Knox had a demonstrative impact in his relations with Mary, Queen of Scots. He urged her to repent of her idolatry. She urged him to not rebel against her authority. In their clash, we witness an example of the progress of liberty in Scotland: the Parliament resolved (1) that the regent could no longer determine the religion of the subjects, and (2) that the religious convictions of the populace over-ruled the religious practices of the regent. At that time, it must be acknowledged, that many Scots desired to live as free men and women when it came to the practice of their religion. The Scottish Reformation was built upon such a strong desire.

In subsequent years the rallying cry of the Scottish Covenanters would express these same sentiments: the motto “For Christ’s Crown and Covenant” affirmed that only Jesus Christ was the head of the church (or Kirk). It was due to the efforts of John Knox that liberty in Scotland came about. His emphasis on the responsibilities of the “lesser magistrates” to overthrow tyrannical “greater magistrates” furthered the cause of religious freedom in Scotland. Beyond that, the lawful resistance of tyrants became a foundational concept that was applied in many nations over the next century in the progress of liberty.

An Addendum:

I am indebted to Dr. Joseph Morecraft, III, for his fine summary of John Knox’s view of the covenantal nature of civil government. Here it is…

“The Covenantal Basis of Civil Government”

by Dr. Joseph Morecraft, III

“Knox taught that a just civil government is covenantal, or federal, i.e. based on a series of covenants that define its authority, limitations, functions, powers, and responsibilities. According to Knox:

— The civil magistrate is in covenant with God, promising to rule according to His revealed Law and to oppose idolatry, (2 Kings 23:1-3).

— The civil magistrate is in covenant with the people, promising to rule over them righteously and for their protection, (2 Chronicles 15).

— The people are in covenant with the civil magistrate, promising to submit to his righteous government, as long as he is faithful to his covenants, (2 Chronicles 15).

— The people are in covenant with God, promising to be His faithful people, Exodus 34. This federal approach to civil government is the legal basis for our Declaration of Independence of 1776.”

Source: Dr. Joseph Morecraft III, “Calvin’s Influence on Scotland” in John Calvin: Man of the Millennium (San Antonio, TX: The Vision Forum, Inc., 2008), 269-271.

Select Biography:

Bond, Douglas. The Mighty Weakness of John Knox. Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2011.

Dawson, Jane. “Right of Resistance” in Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith. Donald K. McKim, ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.

Greaves, Richard L. Theology & Revolution in the Scottish Reformation: Studies in the Thought of John Knox. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980.

Kelly, Douglas F. The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992.

Kirk, James. “Scottish Reformation” in Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith. Donald K. McKim, ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.

Knox, John. “The Appellation Addressed to the Nobility and Estates of Scotland” in Selected Writings of John Knox. Kevin Reed, ed. Dallas, TX: Presbyterian Heritage Publications, 1995.

Kyle, Richard J. “John Knox” in Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith. Donald K. McKim, ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.

McCrie, Thomas. The Life of John Knox. Glasgow, Scotland: Free Presbyterian Publications, 1811; Reprint 1991.

McCrie, Thomas. The Story of the Scottish Church. London, Great Britain: Blackie and Son, 1875; Glasgow, Scotland: Free Presbyterian Publications, Reprint 1988.

Morecraft, III, Joseph. “Calvin’s Influence on Scotland” in John Calvin: Man of the Millennium. San Antonio, TX: The Vision Forum Inc., 2008.

Reid, W. Stanford. Trumpeter of God: A Biography of John Knox. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1974.

Trewella, Matthew J. The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates: A Proper Resistance to Tyranny and a Repudiation of the Unlimited Obedience to Civil Government. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.

John Knox on the Responsibilities of the “Lesser Magistrate” – The Genevan Foundation

One Seldom Mentioned Reason Why
We May NEVER SEE Revival

IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION, we find Jesus Christ dictating, to John the Apostle, seven letters addressed to seven churches.   Much can be gleaned from these letters. They seem to have a three-fold application: 1) They are letters to real-live churches existing at that time, 2) They serve a personal application to you and I, and 3) They have a prophetic application.

For example, it is commonly thought that the last letter, addressed to the Church of the Laodiceans, prophetically describes the average church in these last days.   Keep that in mind as you read what Jesus said to the Laodiceans: "And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the
Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.   So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.   Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:" Rev. 3:14-17.

There is no denying that the average Bible-believing church in the United States today is more prosperous than her predecessors in time past.   Comparatively speaking, most churches in this country are sitting on "large" assets.   Add to that the relative "personal wealth" of the members themselves, and we, too, can easily say, "I am rich, and increased with goods."   However, one also can't deny that with all our prosperity we are not accomplishing what we ought to for God.   That is why Christ could just as well be describing us when He said, "thou art lukewarm."

HOW DOES THE LORD DEFINE HOT?

Human nature being what it is, the average church member today will read Christ's rebuke and assume that their church is at least somewhere between hot and lukewarm. We deceive ourselves into thinking we are just fine, only needing minor improvements. But let's forget our sin-laden, self-deceiving definition of hot.   When the Lord says hot, He means HOT as in the early churches we find in the Book of Acts.  After all, can you point to any other churches that did more for God in a short amount of time?   Let us, therefore, compare ourselves to those churches.   Can we honestly say we are as hot as they were?

Thank God there's hope for us.   Christ told the Laodiceans to "BE ZEALOUS therefore, and REPENT" (Rev. 3:19).   We must take heed and do the same.   Furthermore, our zeal must be modeled after those early churches.   So let's examine them, particularly the local church at Jerusalem.   In Acts 2:41-45, the Bible says,

"Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them [that local Church body] about three thousand souls.   And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.   And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.   And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." UH, OH!   (The rubber just met the road!)

DO THEIR ACTIONS SEEM RADICAL TO YOU?   Do they seem extreme?   In Acts 4:34- 37 we also read, "Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.   And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet."

Perhaps, every time you've read that they "Sold their possessions and goods," you assumed they were going beyond the call of duty.   But if we examine the teachings of Christ, their actions look more like "reasonable service," than extremism.   Among other things, Jesus taught His disciples to, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."   (Mat. 6:19-21).   "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."   Mat. 6:24

Christ always drew a line between spiritual things and materialism.   He always down played the importance of earthly possessions.   Jesus said, "And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind.   For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.   But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.   Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.   Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old [i.e. don't keep it too long; be willing to give it away], a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth.   For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."   Luke 12:29-34

No, the members of the church at Jerusalem were not overdoing it.   Their WILLINGNESS to forsake earthly possessions was in accordance to what Christ had taught.   Consider the extent of "non-possessiveness" that we, as Christians, are supposed to have: "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." (Mat. 5:42).  " And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.   ...lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil."   Luke 6:34-35

So detached are we to be from our possessions that we should be willing to forego them as easily as we received them.   Yet, in most cases it's the exact opposite.   We tend to act like Venus fly traps, amassing our possessions with little intention of ever giving them away.   We often heap upon ourselves whatever God has allowed to come our way. We obtain things and "Consume it upon your lusts."   James 4:3

You May be Wondering How all this Hinders Revival? Go back to our example of a hot church.   Consider their willingness to sell all their
possessions and forego their material belongings.   Do you realize that their attitude averts a seldom-mentioned sin that can prevent revival from even starting?   Christ refers to that sin in the following verse.   "And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth."   Luke 12:15

FRIEND, IT IS NOT A SIN TO HAVE POSSESSIONS.   However, if having those possessions become more important to us than the things of God, then we are in trouble.   How willing are we to part with them if it meant revival?   Are we really practicing covetousness without realizing it?   We can go down the list, eradicating every personal, and collective sin as a church and still have no revival because of covetousness. Remember the Laodiceans? Go back again and read what Christ told them.  

 "Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable,
and poor, and blind, and naked:" (Rev. 3:17).   Notice they felt they needed nothing.   Their riches provided a false sense of security that excluded the need of God.   However, they were blind to their spiritually poor and lukewarm state.   No doubt, they were also blind to the sins that robbed them of God's power--among them, probably, covetousness.

Are we blind also?   Is covetousness hiding behind our blind spots?   We Christians have fallen into a trap.   We have become too attached to our possessions, depending upon them even more than we do God.   If a given pastor were to stand in his pulpit one day, and suggest that we sell all and give the money to the cause of Christ, most of us would hesitate long enough to faint.   We would hold a men's meeting, rationalizing among ourselves why such a sacrifice would be "too radical."   We would, no doubt, be unwilling to forego our "safety nets" because, after all, who would be there to catch us when we fall?  

(As if we had to ask.   Read Matthew Chapter Six).

Others would allow the sin of covetousness to possess them, their happiness wrapped up in the things of the world rather than the things of God.   Yet, "man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth."   Please examine your heart. As we try to clean house, preparing the way for revival, let's not forget the seldom-mentioned sin of covetousness.   (See Mark 7:21; Eph. 5:3; Heb. 13:5; 1 Tim. 6:6-11)

Some may argue that the early church's willingness to "sell all" was a by-product of having been filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.   Yet, that doesn't explain the sacrificial attitude of Christ's Apostles, at a time when they didn't even have the indwelling Spirit: 

"And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.   And straightway they forsook their nets, and
followed him."   (Mark 1:17)  

 "And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him." (Mat. 4:22)  

 "And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him."   (Luke 5:11)   

"Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee;" (Mat. 19:27).  

 Let's also not forget the widow who gave all that she had.   "but she of her want [she wanted to, of her own choice] did
cast in all that she had, even all her living."   (Mark 12:42-44)

One Seldom Mentioned Reason Why   We May NEVER SEE Revival

(LORD GIVE US SUCH POWER! I KNOW I NEED IT.)

LORD GIVE US THE POWER TO CONFRONT MAGISTRATES AND KINGS

One goal of this ministry is to confront politicians and hold them accountable to the word of God. 1 Timothy 2:1-5 instructs us to pray for all men, including kings and those in authority, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. A very good example of a political leader who was confronted with the truth of the gospel was the Roman governor, Felix in (Acts 24:22-27). Paul " reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come" he preached on the righteousness of Christ, temperance (self control, one of the fruits of the spirit) and the coming judgement. The Bible says that Felix being convicted of his sin "trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee." we have no scriptures documenting what happened with Felix or if he had ever gotten saved.  The Bible documents the conversion of Nebuchadrezzar Daniel 4:1-37

King Manasseh of Judah: From Depths of Depravity to Child of God

The name of Manasseh is a name of infamy, and of the probably small number of people who know anything at all about him, fewer still know much more than that he was one of the kings of Judah.  And they probably couldn’t tell you whether he was a good king or a bad.

The advantages which should have made Manasseh a faithful servant of God 

Manasseh had the advantage of being directly descended from King David; consequently he was privileged to serve as the shepherd of God’s people.  His father was Hezekiah whom God commended (2 Kings 18:3-6).

Hezekiah would have taught his son, the crown prince, about God; and would have taught him his responsibilities to both God and God’s people.  Manasseh, as he grew up, would also have been surrounded by other godly men and women in Hezekiah’s court, and been able to observe godliness and service in all these servants of God.  And he would have known that he, too, was destined and being groomed to be king and ruler of God’s people, on behalf of the God of heaven and earth. 

Unfortunately, the court would also have had its share of godless, apostate, and totally immoral men and women; and it would seem that this apostate crowd were able to gain more influence and control over him than did his godly father, the king.  Weak Manasseh was apparently unable to resist them, especially given the young age at which he ascended the throne.  And for such a young and impressionable man – a recently become adolescent and almost teenager, really – the attraction of the sexual world into which he was being drawn, would have captivated him.

So, despite his privileges and advantages which should have enabled him to live an outstandingly godly life, he sinned in the most grievous and gross ways.  God condemned the princes, the prophets, and the priests in Manasseh’s time because of their sins, saying to them, “His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.  Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter” (Isa 56:10-11).  And these are they whom Manasseh chose to heed in preference to his father.

Sadly, even some children of today’s pastors, ministers, missionaries and other servants of God, who grow up under the sound of the gospel, reject it, thinking they know better; and, like Manasseh, live in rebellion to God, their lives a disgrace, their attitudes so hostile to God, and their guilty consciences condemning them so relentlessly, that they reject even the idea of God and claim that he doesn’t even exist. 

All this demonstrates that the highest position in the service of God is no protection against sin, corruption, and apostasy, if this privilege is taken for granted or rejected. 

How was Manasseh Unfaithful to God?

The best and most concise way to describe Manasseh’s reign is simply to quote the bible; it is the Holy Spirit’s assessment and judgment of this wicked man.  It is a horrifying catalogue of the most heinous sins and crimes, but, Alas! we too quickly read over the passage, letting our eyes run over the words on the page but not pondering the enormity of Manasseh’s wickedness, thus allowing it to sink in to our soul, which should then cause us to recoil in revulsion and outrage.

“Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and reigned fifty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Hephzibah.  And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, after the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel.  For he built up again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove, as did Ahab king of Israel; and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them.  And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord said, In Jerusalem will I put my name.  And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord.  And he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards: he wrought much wickedness in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger.  And he set a graven image of the grove that he had made in the house, of which the Lord said to David, and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever: Neither will I make the feet of Israel move any more out of the land which I gave their fathers; only if they will observe to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all the law that my servant Moses commanded them.  But they hearkened not: and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel…..Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another; beside his sin wherewith he made Judah to sin, in doing that which was evil in the sight of the Lord” (2 Kings 21:1-9, 16).

The abominations of the heathen

It’s easy to read through this catalogue of sins against God and crimes against humanity and not be touched by it, if we don’t take the time to ponder the enormity of what is being described here, and if we don’t understand the background of what made Manasseh’s sins so sinful.  For example, what were “the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord drove out before the children of Israel” (2 Chron 28:3)?  Moses tells us: “When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.  There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.  Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.  For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee” (Deut 18:9-12). 

These sins, which the LORD tells us are abomination to him, were done greedily by Manasseh; and the above passage in 2 Kings 21: 2-7 enlarges on these abominations, showing the depraved worship practiced by Manasseh and consequently all of Jerusalem and Judah.  Manasseh, who ought to have been a shepherd of God’s people as his godly father was, led the people instead into the grossest forms of idolatry and blasphemy imaginable.  The worship practiced under Manasseh was vile and utterly degrading, but he and his sinful people revelled in it.  What a great fall this was – from Hezekiah’s godly reign to the depths of depravity under Manasseh.  And how fickle the people who first followed godly Hezekiah, and then wicked Manasseh (Jas 1:5-7; Eph 4:14).

God dishonoured and de-throned

Goaded on to ever increasing wickedness by Satan, as a horse being mercilessly whipped in order to make it go faster and faster, Manasseh even set up altars to pagan deities in the temple of Jehovah, the place of which the Lord said to David of his son, Solomon, “He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever” (2 Sam 7:13).  And of God’s presence on Zion, where the temple was situated, David sang, “But [God] chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved.  And he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which he hath established for ever” (Ps 78:68-69).  This was the height of blasphemy!  Satan, through Manasseh, rubbing it in God’s face, as it were, entering God’s own house with his filthy cloven feet and hideous visage and pulling him down from his own throne.  The defiance, the wickedness, is breath-taking.  But so is the judgment that comes on the nation in consequence of this enormous blasphemy – it will be judgment so severe that “whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle” (2 Kings 21:12).

Demons honoured and worshipped

The wall had been breached.  Man had defied God and seemed to get away with it.  Satan had ascended the throne of God on earth.  The setting up of the altars, the idols, and the groves in the house of God had gone unpunished.  The way for Satan’s hosts was now clear and they came in like a flood.  The people engaged in vile and degrading sexual worship of vile and disgusting demons – every form of sexual depravity was practiced (see Lev ch 18 and 20); children were sacrificed to the vile god/demon Moloch; the people sought guidance and counsel from demons through mediums and psychics; witches and wizards replaced the prophets of God; blood was everywhere and the streets of Jerusalem, from one end of the city to the other ran with the blood of the innocent (2 Kings 21:16).  God had promised his people that as long as they obeyed the law of Moses they would remain in the land he had given them forever: “But they hearkened not: and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel” (2 Kings 21:9).

Death!  Death!  And more death!

Blood ran down the streets of Jerusalem in torrents.  The blood shed was not legal punishments for crimes committed, but was the blood – the lives – of innocent people (2 Kings 21:16).  Demons love death.  Satan, Jesus tells us, “was a murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44); and wherever he and his cohorts are present, so are death, and degraded and degrading sexual activity.  Why is this?  The answer is in the first book of the bible.  After the flood recorded in Genesis – which was God’s judgment on humanity for the widespread and intense evil in the world – he instructed: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man” (Gen 9:5-6).  This was God’s first command to humanity after the earth had been cleansed from the evil that had polluted it.  It was linked with the command to “be fruitful and multiply” i.e. produce life (Gen 9:7).  God gives life; Satan takes it.  Satan hates man because he is made in the image of God.  And so, because of his great hatred for God whom he can’t destroy, he vents his hatred and rage on mankind, who are made in God’s image.  He loves to see and inflict suffering and brutal murder and to see blood splashing and spraying and flowing everywhere.  And he loves enslaving human beings to every imaginable (and unimaginable) form of sordid and filthy sexual activity.  The more perverse it is, the more he delights in it, because it defaces the glorious image of God in Man.  Hence the long history of highly sexualised and perverted worship in pagan nations and cultures, human sacrifice which includes children, and the symbolic shedding of blood and death even in lawful modern day rituals of demonic cults such as Freemasonry.

Further background

And so we understand more clearly now why God insisted that the person who took another person’s life must also be put to death – God would not even accept a substitutionary sacrifice for the murderer.  “…ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely put to death….So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it…..Defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit, wherein I dwell: for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel” (Num 35:31, 33-34).  “Thine eye shall not pity him, but thou shalt put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with thee” (Deut 19:13).   

And we understand more fully the sinfulness and heinous blasphemy of Manasseh.  This man who had been reared in the family and the court of the godliest king in Judah’s history, groomed to lead the people of God in worship and obedience, rejected everything his godly father had taught him, and seduced and led God’s people to abandon him and instead serve the demonic deities of the heavens and of the elements and of the weather and of fertility, doing so with perverted sexualised worship and much shedding of blood in child sacrifice and the murders of multitudes of innocents.  Under Manasseh, the whole land, the whole nation, was given over to sin and depravity of unspeakable corruption and wickedness.  Both he and the nation provoked God to such an extent that he would no longer tolerate them any longer, but would bring down his just judgment upon them. 

God’s Just Judgment Falls on Manasseh and Judah 

The narrative repeatedly states that Manasseh’s actions were done “in the sight of the LORD”; and that God was “provoked to anger” (2 Kings 21:6).  So is it any surprise that God responded in fierce anger to Manasseh’s wickedness and sins?  In another account of the life of Manasseh, we’re told: “And the Lord spake to Manasseh, and to his people: but they would not hearken.  Wherefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.  And when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, And prayed unto him: and he was intreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord he was God” (2 Chron 33:10-13).

But despite that God forgave Manasseh personally for his sins because he confessed them to God and repented, he refused to forgive the unrepentant people of Judah and Jerusalem for the sins of Manasseh.  To the people of Judah, God said through the prophet Jeremiah, “Then said the LORD unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth…..and I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the LORD: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy. And I will cause them to be removed into all kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh the son of Hezekiah king of Judah, for that which he did in Jerusalem” (Jer 15:1, 3-4).

Manasseh Turns to God

In the hour of his greatest need, Manasseh remembered the teaching of his youth, that King Solomon, his forefather, prayed to God at the dedication of the new temple and asked of God, in repentance, that God would hear and show mercy and forgive and the people (1 Kings 8:44-51).

Manasseh’s Faith Demonstrated by Works

So Manasseh repented according to God’s prescription as described in Solomon’s prayer, remembering the teaching of his youth.  And when he returned to his city and his palace, and again took up the throne of his fathers to rule his people, it was a different man with a different outlook who now ruled Judah.  Manasseh demonstrated his new-found faith by his works (2 Chron 33: 14-17).

The Account of Manasseh is an Example of Grace

It is a blessing to the Church that somebody wrote the two books of Chronicles, and especially so as we consider the life and fate of Manasseh.  The vital information of Manasseh’s repentance recorded in 2 Chronicles is found nowhere else in the bible.  If we only had the account in 2 Kings, we would believe that Manasseh died unrepentant, another lost sinner, another rebel who abandoned God, and consequently lies in hell in unspeakable torment.  But that is not how the story ends.  It is actually very different, as we have seen, and tells the story of a proud and arrogant man who defied God, and then in his calamity, humbled himself before God; it tells the story of a man whom God loved and had predestined to eternal life.  It tells the story of a kind, gracious and merciful God who is “not willing that any should, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9).  It tells of a God who is full of grace: “…where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom 5:20).  It tells of a God who has provided a way of escape from the fires of hell for all who wish to take it, no matter how great and how many their sins.  It tells of a Saviour who assures sinners: “Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men” (Matt 12:31).  Suffice it to say here that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit refers to attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan; and denotes a heart that is adamantly and stubbornly set against God.  The main point to be grasped is the all-encompassing forgiveness of all our sins.  “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them” (2 Cor 5:19).

The grace of God and the blood of Christ are so effective, so powerful, that all the sins of all the sinners in all the world from beginning to end can be forgiven if only they humbly confess their sins to God, as did Manasseh (1 Jn 1:8-10).  Indeed, the shed blood of Jesus for sinners is sufficient to save worlds of sinners.  Manasseh is here displayed as a sinner saved by grace, demonstrating that no sinner is too sinful to be saved if he repents. 

All scriptures in this article are taken from the Authorised King James Version of the Bible.

King Manasseh of Judah: From Depths of Depravity to Child of God – Sovereign Jesus

True Revival And The Men God Uses
Horatius Bonar

THE world is still sleeping its sleep of death. It has been a slumber of many generations;
sometimes deeper, sometimes lighter--yet still a slumber like that of the tomb, as if destined to continue till the last 'trumpet sound; and then there shall be no more sleep. Yet God has not left it to sleep on unwarned. He has spoken in a voice that might reach the dullest ears and quicken the coldest heart. Ten thousand times has He thus spoken and still He speaks. But the world refuses to hear. Its myriads slumber on, as if this sleep of death were the very blessedness of its being.
Yet in one sense the world's sleep has never been universal. Never has there been an age when it could be said there is not one awake. The multitude has always slept, but there has always been a little flock awake. Even in the world's deepest midnight there have been always children of the light and of the day. In the midst of a slumbering world some have been in every age awake. God's voice had reached them, and His mighty power had raised them, and they walked the earth,
awake among sleepers, the living among the dead. The world has written at large the history of its sleeping multitudes; it becomes the Church of Christ to record the simpler, briefer annals of its awakened ones.

Doubtless, their record is on high, written more imperishably than the world can ever accomplish for its sons, yet still it is well for earth to have a record of those "of whom the world was not worthy". Their story is as full of interest as it is of importance. The waking up of each soul would be matter enough for a history--its various shakings and startings up, ere it was fully aroused; the word or the stroke that effected the work; the time, the way in which it became awake for eternity and for God, as well as its new course of light after it awoke--all these are fraught with an interest to which nothing of time or earth can ever once be compared. And then, when the voice of God awakes not one, but thousands, it may be in a day; when whole villages and districts seem as if arising and putting on new life--how intensely, how unutterably interesting! At such a crisis it seems as if the world itself were actually beginning to awake, as if the shock that had broken the slumbers of so many were about to shake the whole world together. Yet alas! the tokens of life soon vanish. The half-awakened sleepers sink back into deeper slumber, and the startled world lies down in still more sad and desperate security.

The history of the Church is full of these awakenings, some on a larger and some on a smaller scale. Indeed, such narratives form the true history of the Church, if we are to take our ideas of this from the inspired Church history given us in the Acts of the Apostles. Many a wondrous scene has been witnessed from the day of Pentecost downwards to our own day, and what better deserves the attention and the study of the believer than the record of these outpourings of the Spirit? Besides the interest that cleaves to them there is much to be learned from them by the Church. To see how God has been working, and to observe the means and instruments by which He has carried on His work, cannot fail to be profitable and quickening. It makes us sensible of our own short-comings, and it points out the way by which the blessing may be secured. Let us look for a little at the instruments and their success. Let us note their character and contemplate their success. They were men of like passions as we are, yet how marvelously blest in their labours! Whence, then, came their vast success? What manner of men were they? What weapons did they employ?

1. They were in earnest about the great work of the ministry on which they had entered.

They felt their infinite responsibility as stewards of the mysteries of God, and shepherds appointed by the Chief Shepherd to gather in and watch over souls. They lived and laboured and preached like men on whose lips the immortality of thousands hung. Everything they did and spoke bore the stamp of earnestness, and proclaimed to all with whom they came into contact that the matters about which they had been sent to speak were of infinite moment, admitting of no indifference, no postponement even for a day. Yet their fervour was not that of excitement; it was the steadfast but tranquil purpose of men who felt the urgency and weight of the cause entrusted to them, and who knew that necessity was laid upon them, yea, woe was unto them if they preached not the gospel. They felt that, as ministers of the gospel they dared not act otherwise; they dared not throw less than their whole soul into the conflict; they dared not take their ease or fold their arms; they dared not be indifferent to the issue when professing to lead on the hosts of the living God against the armies of the prince of darkness.

2. They were bent upon success.

It was with a good hope of success that they first undertook the awful office of the ministry, and to despair of this would have been shameful distrust of Him who had sent them forth, while to be indifferent to it would have been to prove themselves nothing short of traitors to Him and to His cause. As warriors, they set their hearts on victory, and fought with the believing anticipation of triumph, under the guidance of such a Captain as their head. As shepherds, they could not sit idle on the mountain-side in the sunshine, or the breeze, or the tempest, heedless of their straying, perishing, bleating flock. They watched, gathered, guarded, fed the sheep committed to their care.

3. They were men of faith.

They ploughed and sowed in hope. They might sometimes go forth weeping, bearing precious seed, yet these were the tears of sorrow and compassion, not of despair; they knew that in due season they would reap if they fainted not, that their labour in the Lord would not be in vain, and that ere long they would return bringing their sheaves with them. They had confidence in the God whose they were and whom they served, knowing that He would not send them on this warfare on their own charges. They had confidence in the Saviour whose commission they bore, and on whose errands they were gone forth. They had confidence in the promises of glorious success with which He had armed and comforted them. They had confidence in the Holy Spirit's almighty power and grace, as the glorifier of Christ, the testifier of His work, and the quickener of dead souls. They had confidence in the Word, the gospel, the message of reconciliation which they proclaimed, knowing that it could not return void to Him who sent it forth. Thus they went forth in faith and confidence, anticipating victory, defying enemies, despising obstacles, and "counting not their lives dear unto them that they might finish their course with joy," and the ministry which they had received of the Lord Jesus

4. They were men of labour.

They were required to bear the burden and heat of the day. It might be truly said of them that "they scorned delights and lived laborious days". Their lives are the annals of incessant, unwearied toil of body and soul: time, strength, substance, health, all they were and possessed, they freely offered to the Lord, keeping back nothing, grudging nothing, joyfully, thankfully, surrendering all to Him who loved them and washed them from their sins in His own blood--regretting only this that they had so little, so very little to give up for Him who for their sakes had freely given Himself! They knew by experience something of what the apostle testifies concerning himself to the Corinthian Church. They knew what it was to be "in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness". They had no time for levity, or sloth, or pleasure, or idle companionship. They rose before dawn to commence their labours, and the shades of evening found them, though wearied and fainting, still toiling on. They laboured for eternity, and as men who knew that time was short and the day of recompense at hand.

5. They were men of patience.

They were not discouraged, though they had to labour long without seeing all the fruit they desired. They continued still to sow. Day after day they pursued what, to the eye of tthe world, appeared a thankless and fruitless round of toil. They were not soon weary in well-doing, remembering the example of the husbandman in regard to his perishable harvest: "Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it until he receive the early and latter rain." Many a good plan has been rendered abortive by impatience. Many a day of toil has been thrown away by impatience. Many a rash step has been taken and hasty changes adopted in consequence of impatience. Attempts have been made to force on a revival by men who were impatient at the slow progress of the work in their hand; and seldom have these ended in anything but calamitous failure, or at best a momentary excitement which scorched and sterilized a soil from which a little more patient toil would have reaped an abundant harvest. There may be and there always ought to be the calmest patience in conjunction with the most intense longing for success. "He that believeth shall not make haste."

A friend and brother in the Lord some years ago was called to till a portion of the Master's vineyard in our own land. He labored and prayed and sought fruit with all his soul. Yet at that time he saw but little. He was called away to another sphere of labour. After some years he heard that a work of God had taken place in his former field under another faithful brother and fellow-worker in Christ. On visiting the spot he was amazed and delighted to find that many of those who had been converted were the very individuals whom he had several years before visited, and warned, and prayed for.  " One soweth and another reapeth."

6. They were men of boldness and determination.

Adversaries might contend and oppose, timid friends might hesitate, but they pressed forward, in nothing terrified by difficulty or opposition. Timidity shuts many a door of usefulness, and loses many a precious opportunity; it wins no friends, while it strengthens every enemy. Nothing is lost by boldness, nor gained by fear. It seems often as if there were a premium upon mere boldness and vigour, apart from other things. Even natural courage and resolution will accomplish much; how much more, courage created and upheld by faith and prayer. In regard, for instance, to the dense masses of ungodliness and profligacy in our large towns, what will ever be effected, if we timidly shrink back, or slothfully fold our hands, because the array is so terrific, and the apparent probabilities of success so slender? Let us be prepared to give battle, though it should be one against ten thousand, and who shall calculate the issues?

There is needed not merely natural courage in order to face natural danger or difficulty; there is, in our own day, a still greater need of moral boldness, in order to neutralize the fear of man, the dread of public opinion, that god of our idolatry in this last age, which boasts of superior enlightenment, and which would bring everything to the test of reason, or decide it by the votes of the majority. We need strength from above to be faithful in these days of trouble, and rebuke, and blasphemy--to set our faces like flint alike against the censure and applause of the multitude, and to dare to be singular for righteousness' sake, and to fight, single-handed, the battles of the faith. The sneer, the scoff, the contemptuous smile of superiority, the cold support, the cordial opposition, the timid friendship, the bold hostility, in private and public, from lips of companions, or neighbors, or fellow-citizens--often under pretext of reverence for religion--these are fitted to daunt the mind of common nerve, and to meet these nothing less than divine grace is needed. Never, perhaps, in any age has wickedness assumed a bolder front and attitude; and never, therefore, was Christian courage more required than now. Men of the world, and mere professors, can tolerate, or perhaps commend the customary routine of ministerial duty; but to step beyond that--to break the regularity of well-beaten forms--to preach and labour in season and out of season--in churches, or barns, or school houses, or streets, or highways--to deal faithfully and closely with men's consciences wherever they may happen to be brought into contact with them--to be always the minister, always the watchman, always the Christian, always the lover of souls--this is to turn the world upside down, to offend against every rule of good breeding, and to tear up the landmarks of civilized society. Ministers and Christians require more than ever to be "strong and of good courage", to be "steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord". This has ever been one of the great secrets of success. Them that honour God, God has never failed to honour and bless.

7. They were men of prayer.

It is true that they laboured much, visited much, studied much, but they also prayed much. In this they abounded. They were much alone with God, replenishing their own souls out of the living fountain that out of them might flow to their people rivers of living water. In our day there is doubtless among many a grievous mistake upon this point. Some who are really seeking to feed the flock, and to save souls, are led to exhaust their energies upon external duties and labours, overlooking the absolute necessity of enriching, ripening, filling, elevating their own souls by prayer and fasting. On this account there is much time wasted and labour thrown away. A single word, coming fresh from lips that have been kindled into heavenly warmth, by near fellowship with God, will avail more than a thousand others. Did Christ's faithful ministers act more on this principle, they would soon learn what an increased fruitfulness and power are thereby imparted to all their labours. Were more of
each returning Saturday spent in fellowship with God, in solemn intercession for the people, in humiliation for sin, and supplication for the outpouring of the Spirit our Sabbaths would be far more blest, our sermons would be far more successful, our faces would shine as did the face of Moses, a more solemn awe and reverence would be over all our assemblies, and there would be fewer complaints of labouring in vain, or spending strength for nought. What might be lost in elaborate composition, or critical exactness of style or argument, would be far more than compensated for by the "double portion of the Spirit" we might then expect to receive.

8. They were men whose doctrines were of the most decided kind, both as respects law
and gospel.

There is a breadth and power about their preaching--a glow and energy about their words and thoughts, that makes us feel that they were men of might. Their trumpet gave no feeble nor uncertain sound, either to saint or sinner, either to the church or the world. They lifted up their voices, and spared not. There was no flinching, no flattering, or prophesying of smooth things. Their preaching seems to have been of the most masculine and fearless kind, falling on
the audience with tremendous power. It was not vehement, it was not fierce, it was not noisy; it was far too solemn to be such; it was massive, weighty, cutting, piercing, sharper than a two-edged sword. The weapons wielded by them were well tempered, well furbished, sharp and keen. Nor were they wielded by a feeble or unpracticed arm. These warriors did not fight with the scabbard instead of the blade. Nor did they smite with the flat instead of the edge of the sword. Nor did they spare any effort, either of strength or skill, which might carry home the thrust of the stroke to the very vitals. Hence so many fell wounded under them, such as in the case of the celebrated Thomas Shepard of Cambridge, regarding whom it is said, that "he scarce ever preached a sermon but some or other of his congregation were struck with great distress, and cried out in agony, 'What shall I do to be saved?'".  Or take the following account of the effects produced by a sermon of Jonathan Edwards at Enfield in July 1741: "While the people in the neighboring towns were in great distress for their souls, the inhabitants of that town were very secure, loose and vain. A lecture had been appointed at Enfield; and the neighboring people the night before were so affected at the thoughtlessness of the inhabitants, and in such fears that God would, in His righteous judgement, pass them by, while the divine showers were falling all around them, as to be prostrate before Him a considerable part of it, supplicating mercy for their souls. When the appointed time for the lecture came, a number of the neighboring ministers attended, and some from a distance. When they went into the meeting-house, the appearance of the assembly was thoughtless and vain. The people hardly conducted themselves with common decency. Jonathan Edwards preached. His plain unpretending manner, both in language and delivery, and his established reputation for holiness and knowledge of the truth, forbade the suspicion that any trick of oratory would be used to mislead his hearers. He began in the clear, careful, demonstrative style of a teacher, solicitous for the result of his effort, and anxious that every step of his argument should be clearly and fully understood. His text was Deuteronomy 32: 35, 'Their foot shall slide in due time.' As he advanced in unfolding the meaning of the text, the most careful logic brought him and his hearers to conclusions, which the most tremendous imagery could but inadequately express. His most terrific descriptions of the doom and danger of the impenitent only enabled them to apprehend more clearly the truths which he had compelled them to believe. The effect was as might have been expected. Trumbull informs us, that 'before the assembly was ended, the assembly appeared deeply impressed and bowed with an awful conviction of their sin and danger. There was such a breathing of distress and weeping that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence, that he might be heard. This was the beginning of the same great and prevailing concern in that place, with which the colony in general was visited.'"

9. They were men of solemn deportment and deep spirituality of soul.

Their lives and their lips accorded with each other. Their daily walk furnished the best attestation and illustration of the truth they preached. They were always ministers of Christ, wherever they were to be found or seen. No frivolity, no flippancy, no gaiety, no worldly conviviality or companionships neutralized their public preaching or marred the work they were seeking to accomplish. The world could not point to them as being but slightly dissimilar from itself, or as men who, though faithful in the pulpit, forgot throughout the week their character, their office, their errand. Luther once remarked, regarding a beloved and much-admired friend, "he lives what we preach". So, it was with these much-honored men, whose names are in the book of life.

We quote the following account of Gilbert Tennent's life and doctrine from the pen of Thomas Prince. It will illustrate some remarks under the former head: "From the terrible and deep convictions he had passed through in his own soul, he seemed to have such a lively view of 'the Divine Majesty, the spirituality, purity, extensiveness, and strictness of His law; with His glorious holiness, and displeasure at sin, His justice, truth and power in punishing the damned; that the very terrors of God seemed 'to rise in his mind afresh, when he displayed and brandished them in the eyes of unreconciled sinners. And though some could not bear the representation, and avoided his preaching, yet the arrows of conviction, by his ministry, seemed so deeply to pierce the hearts of others, and even some of the most stubborn sinners, as to make them fall down at the feet of Christ, and yield a lowly submission to Him. "Such were the convictions wrought in many hundreds in this town by Mr. Tennent's searching ministry: and such was the case of those many scores of several other congregations as well as mine, who came to me and others for direction under them. And indeed, by all their converse I found, it was not so much the terror, as the searching nature of his ministry, that was the principal means of their conviction. It was not merely nor so much his laying open the terrors of the law and wrath of God or damnation of hell (for this they could pretty well bear as long as they hoped these belonged not to them, or they could easily avoid them), as his laying open their many vain and secret shifts and refuges, counterfeit resemblances of grace, delusive and damning hopes, their utter impotence, and impending danger of destruction; whereby they found all their hopes and refuges of lies to fail them, and themselves exposed to eternal ruin, unable to help themselves, and in a lost condition. This searching preaching was both the suitable and principal means of their conviction. "And now was such a time as we never knew. More came to one minister in one week in deep concern about their souls, than in the whole twenty-four years of his preceding ministry."

We add a few quotations from George Whitefield's Journals. The reader will see how they bear upon the preceding statement regarding the Christian ministry.
"On Thursday, he preached the public lecture at the Old South. He had chosen another text, but it was much impressed on his heart that he should preach from our Lord's conference with Nicodemus. A great number of ministers were present: and when he came to the word, 'Art thou a master in Israel, and knowest not these things,' he says: 'The Lord enabled me to open my mouth boldly against unconverted ministers; to caution tutors to take care of their pupils; and also to
advise ministers particularly to examine the experience of candidates for ordination. For I am verily persuaded the generality of preachers talk of an unknown and unfelt Christ; and the reason why congregations have been so dead is, because they have had dead men preaching to them. O that the Lord may quicken and revive them, for His own name's sake! For how can dead men beget living children? It is true, indeed, God may convert men by the devil, if He pleases, and so
He may by unconverted ministers; but I believe He seldom makes use of either of them for this purpose. No, the Lord will choose vessels made meet by the operation of the blessed Spirit for His sacred use. Unspeakable freedom God gave me while treating on this head. In the afternoon, I preached on the Common to about fifteen thousand people and collected upwards of £200 for the Orphan House. Just as I had finished my sermon, a note was put up to me, wherein I was desired
to pray for a person just entered upon the ministry, but under apprehension that he was unconverted. God enabled me to pray for him with my whole heart; and I hope that note will teach many others not to run before they can give an account of their conversion. If they do, they offer God strange fire'." "He preached on Monday at Westfield and Springfield, and on Tuesday at Suffield, to large audiences, and with his usual power. A little below Springfield, when crossing a bridge, he was
thrown from his horse, and 'stunned for a while'; but was soon able to remount and proceed. At or near Suffield, he met with a minister, 'who said it was not absolutely necessary for a gospel minister to be converted'; meaning doubtless, that though conversion was necessary for his salvation, it was not indispensable to his ministerial character and usefulness. This interview gave Whitefield a subject, 'I insisted much in my discourse upon the change of the new birth, and also
the necessity of a minister's being converted before he could preach Christ aright. The word came with great power, and a great impression was made upon the people in all parts of the assembly.

Many ministers were present. I did not spare them. Most of them thanked me for my plain dealing. But one was offended; and so would more of his stamp if I were to continue long in New England. For unconverted ministers are the bane of the Christian Church.' "His ride to Stanford was dark and rainy. That night he was visited with a great inward trial, so that he was pained to the heart. He was somewhat dejected before he went out of his lodgings the next morning, and somewhat distressed for a text after he got into the pulpit. 'But at length the Lord directed me to one, but I looked for no power or success, being very low by my last night's trial. Notwithstanding, before I had preached half-an-hour, the blessed Spirit began to move on the hearers' hearts in a very awful manner. Young, and especially many old people, were surprisingly affected, so that I thought they would have cried out. At dinner, the Spirit of the Lord came upon me again, and enabled me to speak with such vigour against sending unconverted persons into the ministry, that two ministers, with tears in their eyes, publicly confessed, that they had laid their hands on young men, without so much as asking them whether they were born again of God or not. After dinner, finding my heart much enlarged, I prayed, and with such
power, that most in the room were put under concern. And one old minister was so deeply convicted that, calling Mr. Noble and me out, with great difficulty (because of his weeping) he desired our prayers; for, said he, 'I have been a scholar and have preached the doctrines of grace for a long time, but I believe I have never felt the power of them in my own soul.' O that all unconverted ministers were brought to make the same confession.'"

Such were the instruments. Such were the mighty things accomplished by them in the strength of the Spirit of the Lord. In the different awakenings, there were doubtless many things which proclaimed the frailty and imperfection of the agency through which the Holy Spirit wrought His mighty signs and wonders. There were things to remind man that the treasure was in earthen vessels. These revivals were not without their blemishes. There might be errors, there might be imprudencies, there might be excitement, there might be physical emotion; but still, notwithstanding all that may be spoken against them, the hand of God was manifestly there,
awakening, deepening, extending, carrying forward the mighty movement by which the walls and bulwarks of the prince of darkness were, in many of his strongholds, shaken to their deepest base. The Lord gave the word, and great was the company of those who published it, as well as of those who received and obeyed it.

Nothing was to be seen but a faithful minister of Christ, surrounded by a small band of praying ones, leading on the array against the prince of darkness! There was no pomp, no display, no artifice, no carnal attraction. Yet the ranks of darkness gave way before them, and multitudes owned the power of the simple yet resistless words that fell from their earnest lips! How could the world but wonder at such vast results, so disproportioned to the apparent cause? How could they but feel, if they did not confess, that all this was the doing of the Lord? As an illustration of how remarkably the work was of God and not of man, we quote without comment the following passages from A Narrative of Surprising Conversions by Jonathan Edwards. "It is observable how, at this remarkable day, a spirit of deep concern would seize upon persons. Some were in the house, and some walking in the highway; some in the woods, and some in the field; some in conversation, and some in retirement; some children, and some adults, and some elderly persons, would sometimes of a sudden be brought under the strongest impressions, from a sense of the great realities of the other world and eternal things. But such things, as far as I can learn, were usually, if not ever, impressed upon men while they were in some way exercising their minds upon the Word of God or spiritual objects. And for the most part. it has been under the public preaching of the Word that these lasting impressions have been fastened upon them.

"A great and earnest concern about the great things of religion and the eternal world, became universal in all parts of the town, and among persons of all degrees and all ages; the noise among the dry bones waxed louder and louder; all other talk but about spiritual and eternal things, was soon thrown by . . . The minds of people were wonderfully taken off from the world; it was treated among us as a thing of very little consequence. They seemed to follow their worldly business more as a part of their duty, than from any disposition they had to it . . . The only thing in their view was to get the kingdom of heaven, and everyone appeared to be pressing into it. The engagedness of their hearts in this great concern could not be hid, it appeared in their very countenances. It was then a dreadful thing amongst us to lie out of Christ, in danger every day of dropping into hell; and what persons' minds were intent upon was to escape for their lives and fly from the wrath to come. All would eagerly lay hold of opportunities for their souls and were wont very often to meet together in private houses for religious purposes; and such meetings, when appointed, were greatly thronged. There was scarcely a single person in the town, old or young, left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world. Those who were wont to be the vainest and loosest, and those who had been most disposed to think and speak slightly of vital and experimental religion were now generally subject to great awakenings. And the work of conversion was carried on in a most astonishing manner and increased more and more. Souls did, as it were, come by flocks to Jesus Christ. From day to day, for many months together, might be seen evident instances of sinners brought out of darkness into marvelous light.

"Our public assemblies were then beautiful; the congregation was alive in God's service, every one earnest, intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth. The assembly in general was, from time to time, in tears while the Word was preached; some weeping with sorrow and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbors. . Those amongst us that had formerly been converted were greatly enlivened and renewed with fresh and extraordinary incomes of the Spirit of God; though some much more than others, according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Many who had before laboured under difficulties about their own state, had now their doubts removed by more satisfying experience, and more clear discoveries of God's love." When man proceeds to the accomplishment of some mighty enterprise, he puts forth prodigious efforts, as if by the sound of his axes and hammers he would proclaim his own fancied might, and bear down opposing obstacles. He cannot work without sweat, and dust, and noise. When God would do a marvelous work, such as may amaze all heaven and earth, He commands silence all around, sends forth the still small voice, and then sets some feeble instrument to work, and straightway it is done! Man toils and pants, and after all effects but little: the Creator, in the silent majesty of power, noiseless yet resistless, achieves by a word the infinite wonders of omnipotence!

In order to loose the bands of winter, and bring in the verdure of the pleasant spring, He does not send forth His angels to hew in pieces the thickened ice, or to strip off from the mountain's side the gathered snows, or to plant anew over the face of the bleak earth, flowers fresh from His creating hand. No! He breathes from His lips a mild warmth into the frozen air; and forthwith, in stillness but in irresistible power, the work proceeds; the ice is shivered, the snows dissolve, the rivers resume their flow, the earth awakes as out of sleep, the hills and the valleys put on their freshening verdure, the fragrance of earth takes wing and fills the air, till a new world of beauty rises in silence amid the dissolution of the old! Such is God's method of working, both in the natural and in the spiritual world--silent, simple, majestic, and resistless! Such was the Reformation! Such were the revivals in Scotland under our fathers of the Covenant! Such was the Kirk o' Shotts on that memorable Pentecost,
when the unstudied words of a timid trembling youth, carried salvation to five hundred souls. Such was Ayr in its Pentecostal days, when from the lonely church at midnight, there went up to heaven the broken sighs of that man of prayer, John Welsh. And such was Northampton in later times, when Jonathan Edwards watched and prayed for its citizens, and when, from the closet of that holy man, there went forth the living power that wrought such wonders there! And is the Lord's hand shortened that it cannot save, or is His ear heavy that it cannot hear?

"The Confederate Army regularly referred to God as the sovereign One who decided their future. God did decide. Slavery ended, the Reconstruction began, and a country soon was forced to unite. Despite horrible bloodshed and many lives being lost, God’s sovereignty was evident as mankind was free. From the beginning of history, God has been with all who believe and trust Him, and the same was true during the Civil War; God was in the hearts of those who believed in Him.

The point is well made that victors write history. However, the student of Christian history must never forget children of Christ have always been present on both sides of major wars. Believers and unbelievers fought on both sides. While the realization of sin and the fall of mankind was prominent, God’s love remained with those who called upon Him for salvation and peace. The lesson to be learned from the Civil War for the modern-day Christian is simple: much pain, suffering, and destruction occur until the Lord Jesus Christ returns to rescue His people. While it is understandably difficult to comprehend the evil and destructive acts of mankind, such events are nevertheless part of history that must occur for the children of God to be called home finally. When Christ is not the center of one’s life, chaos follows.

The nation at the time of the Civil War, similar to today, wrestled with sin. And much like today, chaplains and other Christians took advantage of such opportunities to share Christ in a time of need. Ultimately, close to one million Americans died in the Civil War, but we can find comfort that the Gospel was shared throughout each battle campaign and even to those dying of their wounds. Jesus promised hard days to come (famine, disasters, and war), but He also promised eternal glory to all who believe in Him."

The Confederate Army and God – Abbeville Institute

CHRISTIANS AND LOCAL CHURCHES CAN TURN THE TIDE OF DARKNESS BY PREACHING THE OLD-FASHIONED GOSPEL TO CONVERT SINNERS! THEY CAN ALSO HELP BY REBUKING OUR NATIONAL SINS IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE!

The Guilt Of Sin in the Eyes of a Holy God

Most preachers today have lost touch with the reality of God's law. Here's a brief quote from Jonathan Edwards' classic sermon “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God” . . .

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of God's enemies.

Could you imagine Joel Osteen speaking these same words to his coliseum of followers? He'd be preaching to empty seats mighty quickly. Could you imagine Pat Robertson on the 700 Club speaking these words on national TV? He'd be finished. 2nd Timothy 4:3 tells us why, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” Americans are spoiled rotten with pride and self-righteousness. They only want to hear about how to get rich, prosper, and have better health. People won't tolerate being told how sinful they are these days. The truth hurts!

They are vehemently opposed to hell, fire and damnation preaching. We boast of being a nation that “values life,” even going to war against other nations for their alleged “human rights violations”; yet, Americans are GUILTY of murdering tens-of-millions of their own children through abortion. How hypocritical! How wicked! How sinful! 

Who do we think we are to condemn others for the SAME crimes we commit as Americans? Do you see the wickedness? How many preachers and pastors today would DARE tell a group of Americans that they are dirty, filthy, rotten, sinners, deserving of Hell-fire? You'll never hear a greedy televangelist preach a “Payday Someday” sermon, or “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God.” Read again what Pastor Edwards' said... “Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell.”

Today's apostate ministers preach about everything except God's penalty against man's sin. The topic of Hell is avoided. Most lost sinners today believe themselves undeserving of any eternal punishment for their faults and shortcomings. God's love has been overemphasized to the point that many sinners cannot reconcile God's love with the Biblical condemnation that comes from a just God. Over 700 times the Bible mentions God as being “Holy,” as compared to mentioning God's love about 120 times. Churches today are filled with sycophantic praises. Psychology has replaced old fashioned Bible preaching.

Many unrepentant people today, who are proud and self-righteous, "think" they are saved simply because they "gave their life to Jesus." This is the heresy being taught in Charismatic circles today and by their televangelists. Judas gave his life to Jesus and went to Hell. The Pharisees dedicated their lives to religion and went to Hell. You'd better get BORN-AGAIN!  We are saved through Jesus' blood that takes our sins away. The great evangelist Charles Finney said...

“The severity of the Law should be unsparingly applied to the conscience until the sinner's self-righteousness is annihilated, and he stands speechless and condemned before the Holy God.” —Evangelist Charles Finney (1792-1875)

Televangelists utterly fail to preach against America's sins. All we hear is how someone was on the brink of bankruptcy, but then sent in their last $20 to The 700 Club, and now their life is a bed of roses. 2nd Peter 2:3 describes these greedy imposters in exact Words... “And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.” Woe unto America's apostate televangelists!!!

We need to preach the “Thou shalt nots” of the Bible. Sinners need to recognize that they've sinned against God. Many people today have a frivolous attitude toward coming to Christ, because they genuinely don't see their NEED. All they see is a big game of playing church, giving money to some greedy preacher and being brainwashed. The fault rests upon America's preachers who have dropped the ball concerning the awfulness of sin. Some churches are even ordaining homosexuals. Other churches support abortion rights. It is shameful. The Apostle Paul states in Romans 7:13 that God's law was given so “that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.”

Television does the opposite of the Bible, desensitizing the viewer to the awfulness of sin. The law of God does the exact opposite of Hellivision—the law SENSITIZES us to the sinfulness of sin! TV desensitizes it's viewers to the sinfulness of sin. The average adult today grew up being saturated with TV—murders, rapes, adulteries, nudity, cursing, robberies, deaths, et cetera. As a tragic consequence, people today don't discern any difference between fiction and reality. Sin in real life is no big deal anymore, because people have become desensitized through Godless television. With the TV having become America's IDOL, it behooves every preacher and pastor in America today to preach GOD'S LAW. 

Salvation is simply receiving Christ's death, burial and resurrection as full payment for OUR SINS. There are no requirements to be saved. Jesus paid for everyone's sins 2,000 years ago on the cross. It is a gift. But you must receive the gift or it will be forfeited. God has freely provided salvation to anyone who wants it, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Galatians 3:26, “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”

No Salvation Without The Law

“Finney never made an altar call within the first twenty eight nights of preaching. Most of our evangelists don’t have twenty eight sermons. Twenty eight nights in a row and he never made an altar call. He didn’t preach the love of God. He… didn’t say “you’re a sinner, God loves you.” He said “God is angry with the wicked every day” (Ps 7:11) which the Word of God says. He didn’t preach grace, he preached Law. He didn’t preach love, he preached judgment. He didn’t preach heaven, he preached hell. He didn’t say “you’re a wonderful person” he said “you’re a rebel”. But he got results. 64% of D. L. Moodys converts backslid, 72% of the converts Finney got stood because he knew how to attack the human will, not just the emotions.” Leonard Ravenhill

God's Law and Evangelism

The following is excerpted from SOWING AND REAPING: A COURSE IN EVANGELISM. See end of report for more information.

MEMORY VERSES: Ecclesiastes 12:13-14; Isaiah 64:6; Matthew 5:28; Romans 3:19-20; Galatians 3:24; James 2:10; Revelation 20:15

We use God’s law to show men that they are sinners. The ground of the soul must be tilled with the sharp plow of God’s law so that it can receive the seed of the gospel.

1. It is the law that the Spirit of God uses to bring conviction to men’s hearts.

See Romans 3:19-20; Galatians 3:24.

No individual will cast himself upon Christ for salvation unless he first is convinced that he is a lost sinner with no hope apart from the cross. This is what causes the sinner to flee for refuge (Heb. 6:18).

2. Most soul winning programs pass over the fact of sin and man’s lost condition far too lightly and quickly.

They teach the soul winner to quote a verse or two about sin and then to ask the individual, “Do you believe you are a sinner?”

Many people will answer this in the affirmative simply because they know that they are not perfect, but they also do not believe that they are so wicked as to deserve God’s wrath. Most people will admit that they aren’t perfect, but they also think of themselves as good or at least that their good outweighs the bad. They know they have done wrong, but they don’t think of themselves as deserving of hell. In their minds, they redefine “sin” to be a lack of perfection or a lack self-esteem or (if Catholics or Hindus) they divide sin into “categories” of big and small or some such thing.

They do not believe that they were sinners from conception (Psalm 51:5) and that even their very righteousness is as filthy rags before a holy God (Isaiah 64:6).

An example of not plowing the ground sufficiently was told to me by a pastor friend who had the following experience at a prominent independent Baptist church that operates a large Bible college.

“We went out with their staff on Saturday morning for soul winning. We were immediately partnered up with some of the veterans. The first door we went to, we spoke to a friendly Catholic guy and to my surprise, the guy got ‘saved’ before my very eyes as ------- took him from a few scripture passages to the sinner’s prayer so smoothly that I was caught off guard. I caught myself and while ------- was recording this man’s contact details and writing it down, I asked the man whether (1) he believed that he was a good person and (2) that it is possible to go to heaven by being a good person. This man who had just got ‘saved’ told me ‘YES.’ I looked around and the other two men beside me said nothing and did nothing. We went to a few more places and eventually reached a home with a Roman Catholic young lady who came to the door. She said she was a professing Christian. Even though she said that all churches were the same ------- gave her assurance of salvation by quoting 1 John 5:13.”

It is unconscionable to deal with people in such a shallow way. The “Catholic guy” acknowledged that he is a “sinner,” but he didn’t mean by that that he was deserving of hell. He didn’t mean what the Bible means. He still thought of himself as basically a good person deserving of heaven because of his “good deeds”! Obviously he wasn’t ready to get saved and should not have been led in a sinner’s prayer. It was all too hasty and shallow.

3. To be saved, I have to acknowledge that I am the sinner that the Bible says I am.

It means admitting that I am such a sinner before God that I deserve hell, that I have wickedly broken God’s holy laws, that my very righteousness is unacceptable before a thrice-holy God.

To confess that I am sinner in a biblical, saving fashion means that I stop making excuses for my sin and blaming others, stop calling myself good, stop pretending that God will accept me as I am.

For this to happen, the ground of the soul has to be properly plowed and the divinely-ordained plow is the law.

This is why the Bible is two-thirds law before we come to the New Testament with its gospel of grace. The Old Testament is the preparation for the New.

Consider Paul’s way of preaching the gospel in the Epistle of Romans. He spent nearly three full chapters dealing with God’s holiness and man’s sin and lost condition (Romans 1:18 - 3:23) before he got to the gospel of justification by faith (Romans 3:24 - 4:25). The love of God isn’t mentioned until chapter 5. This is the true “Romans Road.”

4. God’s law exposes man’s lost condition by revealing God’s holiness and justice.

To understand the need of salvation, men must understand who God is.

They must see God high and holy as Isaiah did, and then they will understand how sinful they are (Isaiah. 6:1-5).

They must see God as the Creator to whom they are accountable for every thought and deed. This is how the Bible reveals God from the very beginning in Genesis 1-3. God made man in his own image, and man is responsible to keep God’s laws and will give account for every infraction.

It is only this knowledge that enables man to understand how sinful he is. When a man compares himself with other men and by human standards, he can be self-righteous, but when he compares himself with God he sees that he comes far short (Rom. 3:23).

5. God’s law exposes man’s sinful condition by showing what God requires.

The law is a mirror to show man what he is before God; the law is a schoolmaster (Galatians 3:24).

It is the law which takes away man’s excuses and stops him from judging himself by human standards and comparing himself to other men and makes him stand guilty before God (Romans 3:19).

The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-17 can be used effectively toward this end.

The first commandment says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). Ask the individual if he has always put God absolutely first in his life. The sincere answer, obviously, will be no.

The second commandment says, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me” (Ex. 20:4-5). Ask if the individual has ever worshipped an idol.

The third commandment says, “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain” (Ex. 20:7). Ask if the individual has ever used the name of God in vain.

The fifth commandment says, “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee” (Ex. 20:12). Ask if the individual has ever dishonored or disobeyed his or her parents.

The eighth commandment says, “Thou shalt not steal” (Ex. 20:15). Ask if the individual has ever stolen anything.

The ninth commandment says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Ex. 20:16). Ask if the individual has ever told a lie to someone.

The tenth commandment says, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's” (Ex. 20:17). Ask if the individual has ever coveted that which does not belong to him.

Show that “whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10). God warned Adam that one sin would result in death (Gen. 2:16-17), and the book of Revelation shows that this is eternal death in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14-15).

Show the teaching of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, by which we learn that God requires that we keep His laws from the heart. External obedience is not enough. Thus, lusting after a woman is likened to adultery (Mat. 5:28) and hating someone is likened to murder (Mat. 5:21-22). By this standard, we see that all men are terrible sinners. We break God’s laws continually in our thoughts as well as in deeds.

Show Christ’s summary of the law (Matthew 22:36-40). No man other than Jesus has loved God with all his heart, soul, and mind, and loved his neighbor as himself. If I see a house burning in my neighborhood and rush to the scene, would I be relieved to see that it is my house instead of my neighbor’s?

Show that it is man’s whole duty to fear God and to keep His law (Ecc. 12:13). Ask the individual if he has lived according to this law and standard.

Show that it is man’s duty to be thankful to God, and just the simple lack of thankfulness is a great sin and spiritual crime (Rom. 1:20-21).

Show that all men who die without salvation will stand before God’s judgment throne and give account. Show the severe nature of this judgment. They will give account for every idle word (Matthew 12:36-37), and God’s standard is that man speak no corrupt words (Ephesians 4:29). Every lie, every expression of hatred, every filthy word, every boast, every instance of backbiting and gossip, every blasphemy, every instance of using God’s name in vain -- all will be judged. In the judgment, God will also judge every secret thing (Ecclesiastes 12:14; Romans 2:16). As a result of this severe judgment, every sinner without the Saviour will be condemned to eternal punishment in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:11-15).

This establishes the fact that all men are sinners who constantly break God’s laws and that all men will be punished with eternal punishment. We can never live up to what God requires and can never pay the price that God’s law demands. Further, when the sinner dies without Christ, he continues to sin forever. Thus the wages of sin is not only physical death but also eternal death in the lake of fire. The punishment lasts forever because the sinning goes on forever.

The First Great Awakening of the 1720s to the 1760s, which greatly affected America and England, was characterized by powerful preaching that plowed the soil of man’s heart deeply by God’s law to awaken souls from the slumber of self-righteousness and worldliness, to bring conviction of sin and knowledge of God’s holiness and wrath in order to lead to true repentance and saving faith in Jesus Christ. Consider “Solemn Warning” by Gilbert Tennent, 1735:

Awake, Awake Sinners, stand up and look where you are hastning, least you drink of the Hand of the Lord, the Dregs of the Cup of his Fury; the Cup of trembling, and wring them out, Isai. 51.17. 
Awake ye Drunkards, and weep and howl, Joel 1.5. For what can ye expect (so continuing) but to drink of that Cup of Trembling I but now mention’d. Awake ye profane Swearers, and remember ye will not get a drop of Water to cool your cursing cursed Tongues in Hell, when they and you shall flame in the broad burning Lake, Luke 16.24. God has said he will not hold you Guiltless, that take his Name in vain, Exod 20.7. 
Awake ye unclean Adulterers, and Whoremongers, and remember that without a speedy Repentance, your dismal abode shall be ever with unclean Devils, the Soul of a God shall be avenged upon you, Jer. 5.8, 29. 
Awake ye Sabbath-Breakers, and reform; or God will break you upon the Wheels of his Vengeance, and torture you eternally upon the Rack of his Justice, Neham. 13.16, 17, 18. And let all other sorts of profane Sinners be entreated to awake out of Sleep and consider their Danger. 
Awake ye covetous griping Nabals, and read what the Apostle James says to you, Chap 5. 1 to 6. Go to now, ye rich Men, weep and howl for the Miseries that shall come upon you. The Rust of your Gold and Silver shall be a Witness against you. Ye have lived in Pleasure upon Earth, and been wanton, you have nourished your Hearts as in a Day of Slaughter. Here we may Note by the Way, that those who live like Beasts here, and will not be induc’d by any Perswasive to repent, reform and act like Men, shall howl like Beasts hereafter, without being heard or pitied, 1 Cor. 16.13. Prov. 1.26. 
Awake ye secure Moralists, and lifeless, sapless Formalists, who are Strangers to the Power of experimental Religion: Remember your shadowy Appearances, can’t deceive the Rein trying God, Gal. 6.7. Nor your dry Leaves of husky spiritless Duties, secure your guilty Souls, from an astonishing overwhelming Inundation of his high and terrible Displeasure, Mat. 5.20.
Awake every of you that are yet in a Christless unconvinced State! Are you not asham’d to sleep all the Day in Sloth, while some are trembling, troubled and distress’d about their Souls, who are not greater Sinners than your selves? Nay, perhaps not near so great; what sleep? while others are crying Night and Day with Tears, and heavy Groans to God, for pardoning Mercy, who have no more precious Souls than you. Sleep! While others are labouring hard and taking Heaven by Storm! What sleep! While some are travelling fast to the heavenly Jerusalem, and rejoicing in the Way with Joy unspeakable and glorious. What will ye draw the Curtains of a carnal Security, and false Hope about you, and sleep to Death and Hell, even when the meridian Sun of the Gospel shines full in your Face, and Life and Immortality is brought to Light, and God, and Christ, his Ministers, Word, Providences, and your own Consciences, are ringing a loud Alarm, a Peal of Thunder in your Ears to awake you: That you may consider your Ways, and turn your Feet to God’s Testimonies. Will you sleep with Fire in your Bosoms? (the unpardon’d Guilt of Sin) with the Curse of God upon your Souls, the Heavens frowning upon you, and shut against you, the burden’d Earth travelling under you, and Hell yawning wide to devour and consume you I Mayn’t I say to you as Moses to Israel, Deut. 29.4. Yet the Lord hath not given you a Heart to perceive, and Eyes to see, and Ears to hear, unto this Day. O! Is it not to be fear’d that God in Justice has left you to a Spirit of Slumber? Because you shut your Eyes against the Light, John 3. That you should sleep and never awake. Jer. 51.57. And I will make drunk her Princes, and her wise Men, and her Rulers, and her mighty Men; and they shall sleep a perpetual Sleep, and not awake, saith the King, whose Name is the Lord of Hosts. Prov. 6.9. How long wilt thou sleep, O Sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy Sleep?

Even in the 20th century, many Bible-believing Baptists understood that the ground of the human heart must be plowed with the law before it can bear the sweet fruit of conversion. Some of the old evangelists would hold meetings and not even preach the gospel for the first few days, preparing the way by preaching hard on God’s holiness and sin and judgment.

J. Frank Norris once preached an entire week on the subject of hell without giving an invitation. Only after a full week of such preaching did he give an invitation, and more than a hundred and fifty were saved.

Even as late as the 1960s Oliver B. Greene preached 25 radio messages in a row on the wrath of God. I doubt he could even get away with that on any of the national Christian radio stations now. It would be considered far too “negative.”

Everything is quick and shallow today, and most churches have been affected by the spirit of the times.

LET'S BE PRAYER WARRIORS!

No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.

Leonard Ravenhill

HOW TO GET YOUR PRAYERS ANSWERED?

Psalms 65:2 “O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.”

What is prayer? Why is it important? How much do you pray?

* The spiritual life of a believer cannot rise above the level of his personal prayer life.
* The spiritual life of a church can never rise above the level of its corporate prayer life.
* The corporate prayer life of a church can never rise above the level of the personal prayer life of each individual believer.
* * *
SCRIPTURES:
1. "Devote yourselves to prayer"
Col 4:2 “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving;”
2. "Pray continually"
1 Thess 5:17 “Pray without ceasing.”
3. "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective"
James 5:16 “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

FAMOUS QUOTES:
"I am so busy now that I find if I did not spend two or three hours each day in prayer, I could not get through the day. If I should neglect prayer but a single day, I should lose a great deal of the fire of faith." -Martin Luther

"What a man is, he is alone on his knees before God and nothing more." -Robert Murray McCheyne (mac shane)

In 40 years, J. Hudson Taylor saw 700 missionaries and 1000 native workers in China. The reason is clear. It is said of Mr. Taylor that the sun never rose upon China without finding him on his knees in prayer.

"Prayer is asking and receiving." -John R. Rice

1. Prayer is God's appointed way for Christians to receive things from Him-
A) God's provision is a prayer away: "You do not have because you do not ask God" (James 4:2).

2. Prayer is God's method of providing Christians with fulness of joy-
A) "Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete" (John 16:24).

3. Prayer is God's method of escaping all trouble, anxiety, and worldly care- (Phil 4:6-7)

4. Prayer is God's proof that you are trusting only Him-(Heb 11:6)

5. Prayer is God's chosen method of using you to change the world- (2 Chron 7:14).

"Our God has boundless resources. The only limit is on us. Our asking, our thinking, our praying are too small. Our expectations are too limited." -AB Simpson

1. GOD IS DELIGHTED BY OUR PRAYERS:
A) "The prayer of the upright pleases him" (Pr 15:8).
B) Our prayers are like "Golden bowls full of incense" (Rev 5:8).

2. GOD RESPONDS ACCORDING TO OUR FAITHFULNESS TO PRAY!
A) "The Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him" (Deut 4:7).
A) "Open wide your mouth and I will fill it" (Psa 81:10).
B) "Ask and it will be given to you..." (Mt 7:7,8).
C) "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer" (Mt 21:22).
D) "And I will do whatever you ask in my name...you may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it" (Jn 14:13,14).

"I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name"
(Jn 16:23).

KJV Sermon Outlines