New Covenant Ways – BT19:  Church teacher-leaders push the bible, but God pushes the Holy Spirit!

 

 

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All through the history of revival you see the same pattern: authoritative teacher–leaders criticizing, resisting, and even persecuting the supernatural grace-gifts of the Spirit (a), carefully “cherry-picking” what grace-gifts of the Spirit they want to accept, and pounding home Sola Scriptura or “By scripture Alone” as if the bible is “the perfect that is come” (b) to justify the exclusion of the supernatural Holy Spirit. <Notes> a) tongues, interpretations, prophecy, healing, exorcisms, miracles: Mark 16:17-18; 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, 28-30, b) 1 Corinthians 13:10.

 

So how does God react to all this resistance?  He “opposes/stands-firm against the proud/unteachable but gives unconditional-loving-favor-of-grace to the lowly/teachable” (a). Some of these objectors “wake up to smell the coffee,” but many don’t!  The early Church Father Irenaeus around 200 AD said that churches who were rejecting the supernatural manifestations of charismata grace-gifts of the Holy Spirit were also the ones devoid of the Holy Spirit’s fruit, like “a leafless terebinth, and as a garden without an abater (plower) – such men are of no use to God, in that they can bear no fruit.”  The Holy Spirit is the only way the garden of our lives can be cultivated and watered!  To quench or suppress any part of His work is to shut The Person out completely! <Notes> a) James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5 citing Proverbs 3:34.

 

The Cessationists, like the Church of Christ that I was saved in, the Baptists, Associate Reformed Presbyterians, and Presbyterian Church in America, don’t believe in the supernatural dunamis enabling-power and ongoing prophetic revelation of the Holy Spirit.  They say that all of that died out with the apostles!  The say that the Continuationism of the Lutheran, Methodist, Moravian, and Pentecostals is wrong, even though Tertullian’s writings also around 200 AD attest to it flourishing, as do: Hippolytus between 170-236 AD, Clement of Alexandria between 150-215 AD, Origen between 185-254 AD, Cyprian around 258 AD, Ephraem Syrus between 306–373 AD, and Augustine as late as 430 AD. The history of revival has also proved the Cessationists dead wrong!  Could this be why Paul even warned the Church against such suppression (a), and stressed to “earnestly desire to prophesy, and in possibility do not forbid speaking in tongues” (b)?  How can churches “cherry pick” what they want to obey out of the New Covenant of the NT?  Like the old covenant, it’s all or nothing!  See also Wikipedia’s “Cessationism versus Continuationism.” <Notes> a) 1 Thessalonians 5:19, b) 1 Corinthians 14:39.

 

I have to remember 2 visions and a dream the Lord gave me at 3 different times:  One was of a brick wall behind Christ’s torn veil in the dimly lit Jewish temple, the wall still blocking the way into the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence is.  He told me the wall was “the cares of this world, the pleasures of the flesh, the voices of demons,” and the little window high up on the wall that you could barely reach with great effort and certainly couldn’t fit through, was “seeing through the bible,” and He told me, “Speak to the wall for 7 days, ‘Come down in the name/authority of Jesus.” I did this literally for 7 days without it fully coming down, but then I realized that 7 is the number for completion throughout the bible, so most likely, the Lord wants me to continually do this until the wall is “completely” down.

 

In another vision, I was in a chair in the middle of a dimly lit room with bare, old wooden walls, with the chair only getting a little light from a high, near impossible-to-reach window to my right. The room was cold and lifeless except for the little bit of light from the window. God told me the little warmth I received in my study chair from all my bible study was from that high window on my right, the place of authority, the place a conservative like myself would place his confidence. However, the door out of this room was in front of me, and that door was Christ. Once I was outside in the bluest sky I’ve ever seen with the greenest lily-like grass and massive trees I’ve ever seen with flowers that turned as I walked past them, I saw twinkling diamond-like flakes of bread floating down from the sky all around me, and I was filled with immense, unconditional-love and joy. It was like I had never lived before!  It was like heaven, but God told me this is the zoe genuine-life of the Holy Spirit He was calling me to, but I had to get up out of that study chair!  Yet, here I am writing this study – it’s a hard habit to break!

 

In another dream, God said the MORE accurate books about God, the theology of God, were on the oldest top shelf of the Library of Congress long before 1452’s printing of the Guttenberg bible, but there was no ladder to reach them but an old rugged cross.  But no matter how you use the cross, even turning it upside down and using the cross-beam as a ladder, you will never reach the ‘True Theology of God,’ because even if you read the old scrolls at the top, they are still second-hand knowledge from mere men, because we don’t have the originals but only handwritten copies by scribes at that!  ‘The True Theology’ can only be received humbly at the foot of the old rugged cross as the angels descend and ascend upon it to deliver it to us by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, just as “the secrets of the kingdom are un-hidden to the little children and least among you first.”  Jesus said, unlike all the “other rabbis, Christ’s yoke of instruction is to learn from Him and this would be kindly useful because it’s custom fitted to us and His burdens/commandments/works forever light to carry, as a cloud is blown by the wind.”

 

Reflection:

 

 

God’s “perfect will” Plan A for learning about Himself and His will that has been restored from Mt. Sinai thru the chadash/kainos New Covenant is completely-different-in-kind and superior by definition and context than that of the old covenant’s gramma writings that we His “permissible will” Plan B due to the disobedience of the Jews, having absolutely nothing in common as the terms chadash/kainos mean.  As we’ve begun to see, God’s Plan A was for ALL of His people is NOW to learn like the OT Prophets did – directly from Him, akouo hearing/listening to understand His phone Voice of directly-spoken/heard prophetic rhema words, directly through revelation, wisdom, and understanding by the means of the Holy Spirit.  We were also meant to eido “mentally ‘see’ to perceive/know God even through visions and dreams, just as with all The Prophets.  A picture is worth more than a 1000 words!  Every member of the Body-of-Christ was meant to share prophecy with one another to build up their trusting-relying-faith and be built up in unconditional-love. That’s what all the passages about Body-Ministry and the Holy Spirit’s grace-gifts say!

 

Prayer:

 

 

Thank You Lord for taking control of the entire process of how to NOW know You and Your will.  Thank You for eliminating ancient writings that even few scholars fully understand or agree upon, let alone what are “holy books” and what aren’t.  The jury has been out all through history, even though religious people fight for what they think are ‘authoritative’ because their foundation is mislaid.  They could have had heard and seen Your Voice, Your visions, and Your dreams to know You like every prophet does, just as You promised for the entire Church age, but they opted to only know bits and pieces about You through writings and try to convince themselves they can confidently “take hold of zoe genuine-life by them,” but like Jesus said to the Pharisees and scribes, “they only testify about Me and yet you refuse to come to Me for zoe genuine-life everlasting.”

 

Thank You that the completely-different-in-kind New Covenant is no longer a ministry of gramma writings but of the supernatural enabling-power of the Holy Spirit to guide us into all the truth and to confirm the simplicity of the gospel logos message.  Praise Your name that little children and the least among us NOW will “see, enter, and receive the secrets of the kingdom before the so-called ‘wise and understanding ones” because NOW it has nothing to do with understanding gnosis informational-knowledge about You but drawing near to you in proseuche conversational-prayer until we “are completely-filled with the abundance of God by the means of the Holy Spirit,” just as your repeatedly exhorted us to do.  Thank You for eliminating all the middle-men teachers and being our “One Teacher.”  Nothing any more is lost in translation or dissemination!  Now it’s back to One on one!  Finally, we have your “perfect will” Plan A and we surrender completely to it!

 

 

 

 

 

Spiritual Education, churches push the bible but God pushes the Holy Spirit, in revival the church leaders are the last to get the Spirit, church leaders are often the first to resist the Holy Spirit, Resisting the Spirit’s gifts quenches the fruit, Cessationism is wrong, Continuationism is correct, Historical proof