TBM TRUMPET CALL 2015-01-19 “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me.” – JOHN 13:20 IDENTIFYING CHRIST IN A MESSAGE The writer of the Epistles to the Hebrews started by saying; “GOD, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds;” {Hebrews 1:1-2}. God’s message has been of love, He desires for all men to hear Him, so He finally sent His Son. However, after several thousands of years of speaking, His people and humans have had difficulties in the art of hearing Him and in obedience. Therefore, the Spirit of God was given the sole mandate of helping those who will receive Christ. His message can only be spoken in love, but must also be received or heard in love; this way all things are done in Christ. But those who receive messages spoken in love, Christ is saying, they have received Him and He who sent Him. What this generation must avoid is rejecting Christ. Before the dark ages, believers in Christ had started compromising the message of the gospel. They had forgotten the admonition to beware of the leaven {Matthew 16:6} and Paul’s warning to stay far aloof of philosophy. Paul wrote; “See to it that no one carries you off as spoil or make yourselves captive by his so-called philosophy and intellectualism and vain deceit (idle fancies and plain nonsense), following human tradition (men’s ideas of the material rather than the spiritual world), just crude notions following the rudimentary and elemental teachings of the universe and disregarding [the message of] Christ (the Messiah).” {Colossians 2:8 AMP} This above warning was the one of the greatest warnings by Christ and His apostle that the church disregarded with grave consequences and which up until now is still being ignored. It got to a time when it was only the nobles of the old Roman Empire who were allowed to be priests. You could not minister in Christ’s church if you were not known, if you could not learn or speak Latin, if your parents were plebeians. The church wanted to win the nobles, so they amended God’s words and teachings to suit the Romans and allowed some paganism. Philosophy and psychology ruled the day because, without it, the nobles considered God’s word not suitable to the Roman psyche. These were the leaven warned about and it is still present till today. Those who pointed out these leaven or corruption were called rebels and killed if they could catch them. Those they could not catch were excommunicated. They became preys, strangled at times and burnt. The truth that was pointed out were never examined, they just wanted them out of the way. Of course, God left and darkness descended, tens of millions were murdered in their defence of the truth. Injustice was the oxygen of the day, blatant denial of the truth was considered evolution. It is a serious thing before God to call evil good and good evil, to put darkness for light and light for darkness, to put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter {Isaiah 5:20}. But to brand those who have become prey for pointing out these repetitions of corruption in God’s church as rebels or malcontents, is a grave travesty! HOW TO IDENTIFY LEAVEN A saint whose words still speaks once wrote; “The best was for Satan to deal with us is to cause us to act in our own strength. Satan wants us to move in ourselves. He wants us to exercise our own natural ability and fleshy energy in our work for God. What is natural ability? Natural ability is ability which we originally had and which has never been dealt with by the cross. It accompanies our character. The natural ability of one person may be his own cleverness. The natural ability of another may be his eloquence. He speaks well independent of any special power from the Holy Spirit. Man, however, cannot serve God with natural ability that has never been dealt with by the cross. The failure of the church is due to man bringing in his natural ability. Oh we all must be brought by God to the place where we are trembling and fearful lest we do anything without the Lord.” – WATCHMAN NEE It took forty years for God to detoxify Moses of Egypt and to instruct him on how to be a shepherd, before Moses could be put to use by God. For Apostle Paul, it was about a fifteen year detoxification and training program. God removed him completely from those who were already having a hard time getting rid of the old mind set of tradition before Paul could be properly used of God. Paul received several beatings on this matter alone. So he was better qualified, after being schooled in philosophy and theology, to warn us to avoid it. Failure to heed all these warnings led to the dark ages. Have we learnt our lessons? Evidence abounds to present the contrary. Anytime our focus is on how to influence people, what skills are required, strategies to deploy, what people will respond kindly and favourably to, people friendly, how to attract people; all from the rule books of psychologists and philosophers, we have returned to the leaven that created the evolved Roman Empire in the church of God. It is the same old story. Our focus is removed from the sender to those we are sent to. We become more conscious of how the people will receive our messages rather than delivering the message with the help of the Helper. Not a few took kindly to listening to John the Baptist dressed as a camel, or Jesus’ refusal to submit Himself to the rulers and be supervised by them, or to the first apostles who asked if the rulers preferred that they listened to them rather than God. There is no reason to allow history to repeat itself. But yet, the greater issue is confronting us. Namely, some who will not only wrest words, but carefully select Scriptures to back up insinuations, extrapolations of all sorts, to carefully suggest rebellion in truth spoken in love. Not only should we all identify these when they show up, we should never allow ourselves to be hoodwinked again. All that Luther said, that George Fox said, that Wesley said etc, that was found to be true, were never examined by those who wanted them excommunicated and banished. They wanted them out of the picture because they were seeing problems with what they have conceived by themselves. But can we hide from God? Is it not better to receive truth spoken in love than to continue repeating the same error that brought the church to the need for reformation? Should we hold on to psychology and philosophy (theology), despite clear and unambiguous warnings from the word of God? Anytime, for whatever reasons we may conceive of, when any form of manipulation is employed, that is all the devil needs. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump {1 Corinthians 5:5}. Unleavened bread is described as sincerity and truth {1 Corinthians 5:8}. This was what folks refused to believe and acknowledge in the past. These are some of the reasons why we advocated a new Council of elders, a conference to trash out the chaff from the wheat, so that those who desire to turn what is supposed to bring glory to God and liberation of Christ’s sheep will be reprimanded. In God’s kingdom and work, “But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatever doth make manifest is light.” {Ephesians 5:13} Jesus taught; “He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh His glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.” {John 7:18}. It is the best time in our history, to identify the meanings of all that Jesus Christ and His apostles warned us about, what we are called by God to beware of. When we do this, we will be obeying God. It will signify our desire and intention to give the church back to God. We can scrap all our programs and strategies, and hear the Son of God again. We can identify clearly what the word of God describes as leaven and philosophy and vain deceit. No one need ever be confused about them anymore. Jesus was careful of whom He selected as His disciples; He prayed before calling them. We know from experience that if He had called those with plethora of degrees, it may not have turned out alright. He chose plain men, fishermen and semi-literate men, and then God planted Himself in them, and rulers wondered; “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” {Acts 4:13} No tactics, no strategies, no desire to influence anyone; just Jesus, and Jesus alone, and He was glorified. And when Jesus Christ called the learned, Saul of Tarsus, He worked on him thoroughly, to the extent that Paul the Apostle could warn of those thing he considered as dung. So our education should not constitute a barrier to God and His work. This call therefore is this; let us hear and receive Jesus Christ alone in our messages to believers and the “yet to believe”. He is the only one worth listening to. He has promised; “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.” {John 12:32} The ultimate plan of God is for the body to be compatible with the Head. The Head is gold; the body should be gold, through and through. Every new day is the best time to turn fully to God, Amen. This message in given totally in love; God bless and have a good week.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 00:14:42 +0000
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