WHERE IS THE LORD RIGHT NOW?
After a couple of conversations with some nationalists pastors and some local ministries, the center of their concern came down to the content of this passage from Mark in the New Testament:
Mark 13:19-22: “For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be. And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days. And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, he is there; believe him not: For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.”
In a generation when most of the men in pastorates now were born in the period between the 1960s and the early 1980s, they are without much of the experience of the Holy Spirit and His operation. This imbalance in the practical experience has become the source of many failures of ministries, and some men putting on sideshows with imitations of the real authority and movement of the Holy Spirit.
From the passage above from the book of Mark, that one thing is very evident. By that I mean putting up the imitation, imitating what they have seen from the histories of great past meetings. What is the result of using this form of imitation in the services? People learn the reality of God by experiencing the presence of God, and unless they touch and taste that reality in Him, to use a current expression from the youth of today, it’s crash and burn time.
I learned a lesson from the pastors from the mission groups, and it was simply that life for the body spiritually comes from two sources: first, Leviticus 11:17 tells us the life of the flesh is in the blood, and second, the Gospels tell us numerous times that the bread of life is Jesus.
People, what I am trying very hard to say is the only way to get a true picture of the life of God in you is in the Word so that the Spirit of God can then keep fresh in your mind who He is, what He said, and what He did.
If you put a new believer out on the street and he runs into one of these knock-off versions of Christ, how is he going to discern the truth of this individual unless he is equipped in the Word?
Check out the word affliction above and see if the word is taken from an original group of words meaning torment or emotional affliction in every way possible (read Daniel 7:25). The word can also be said to mean oppressing mental oppression without a relief. It is like the worst headache conceivable, and you go to medicine chest to get some headache medicine. In the medicine chest are five or six different types of pills for headaches, so to be sure you kill the headache, you take one or more of each kind. In two or three hours you might still be looking for help because the pain doesn’t cease. Desperation begins, and you take whatever you can find that promises help.
People right now are in the most desperate times they have seen since the days of early history. These afflictions are incessant and many times without relief, so exactly what do you do? I have never known the period where the emotional can be so destructive that it is like mentally being destroyed one cell at a time.
In one week you see advertisements for several different ministries like this and your beaten spirit drives you to go to receive the possibility of an answer. In these meetings a man is usually uplifted and little emphasis is placed on the name of Jesus.
When I spoke to one of the ministers in missions concerning these type meetings that we have, his answer to me somehow moved me backwards about ten feet. He questioned me like this: Is there anything in these meetings that can be traced to a biblical reference? I told him I didn’t think so. He said in a meeting like this in his area, many would have prayer for deliverance, and until a proper biblical spiritual order could be observed, the meeting would be closed.
It is becoming painfully evident that we are desperately seeking anything that looks like a spiritual charge and will accept any type of imitation or falsehood. People want some kind of reality that will stop this afflictive pain, and because in many instances a full gospel truth isn’t coming from the pulpit where they attend, they go looking for wildfire or the strange fire of Aaron’s sons. Are we dealing with strange fire in our midst? Are the altars where we worship clean before the Lord? Do we need a revival that is truthfully oriented in the core of God’s Word?
Pastor Jim( Pray for me the second part of the Salvation article is next)
