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The Lord’s Prisons

One of the first sermons I preached when beginning to serve as a pastor of Mount Zion Fellowship had to do with following Christ patiently. I felt in my spirit that the Charismatic movement would be divided over the issue of patient waiting on the Lord.

The majority of the movement would seek the power of Christ, attempting to do "great things." The minority would cease from their own works and wait in the Lord’s prison, patiently bearing their cross after Christ, until Jesus saw fit to act. What I have seen over the last thirty years has confirmed my impression.

(1/18/2008) During modern times (I don’t know when or where it started) a spirit has entered the Christian ministry. I am not sure what to call it, but it seeks to use the power of Christ apart from the traditional cross-carrying obedience and patient waiting on the Lord that we usually associate with discipleship.

There is talk of binding the principalities over cities; putting on our administrative hat; stepping out in faith. I suppose the faith and prosperity errors are part of it. We have had the "laughing revival." And there have been "revivals" in Toronto, Canada and Gainesville Florida that seem to be based more on enthusiasm than the Spirit of God. The Todd Bentley debacle is one of the later manifestations. I wonder what is next.

And then we have, "speaking the creative word." It is a fact that a member of the Body of Christ may be directed to speak a creative word, BUT ONLY AS JESUS DIRECTS, not because we just think it is a good idea.

What we may not understand, we Charismatics, is that Jesus is the only lawful Administrator of the power of the Spirit. We are not to attempt to use the gifts of the Spirit. We are to keep looking to Christ so we will know what we are to exercise and when we are to exercise it. If this simple fact were brought to the attention of Charismatic people, we might have real revival on our hands, not the kind of worked-up things we have been experiencing over the past twenty-five years.

When you think about the dramatic calls to see how marvellously God will work when we all get together and pray, or show by our actions that something remarkable is taking place, and then place these scenes against the ministries of the Apostles of the first century, there is a noticeable difference. Has God’s way of working actually changed?

I believe it is time to ask this question.

For myself, I don’t think much of the present commotion is of the Lord Jesus. Are some people genuinely converted to Christ? Is lasting fruit being borne? I think it is, in some cases.

The thirteenth chapter of the Book of Revelation tells us of the False Prophet who will assist Antichrist. Notice that the False Prophet has the two horns (power) of the lamb (Lamb?) but speaks with the voice of the dragon. The voice of the dragon is that of self-will. "I will; I will; I will." It is easy to apply this description of what is taking place in some of the Charismatic ministries.

Will it be self-cantered Christians who support the self-cantered Antichrist world system? I think so.

The following passage is found in the second chapter of the Book of Revelation: Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life. (Revelation 2:10)

God permits (or directs) Satan to put us in prison. But God always is in control. The length of time is determined in advance. The reward is the authority and power of endless, incorruptible Divine Life.

The imprisonment is that of our personal cross. Our personal cross takes two forms: we are not given what we so fervently desire at the time we desire it; or/and we have to live in a situation that we deplore for an unknown period of imprisonment.

When Audrey and I first came to Mount Zion, I resolved to do only what the immediate situation called for, the practical actions any normal person would take in his or her situation. I resolved to avoid planning major programs until I knew what Christ was saying.

If you think waiting on the Lord like this is easy you possibly have never tried it. There are several forms of pressure that urge us to get out and do something. Win souls for Christ. Build a big church. Compel them to come in. Win your city for Christ. Take dominion over the spiritual rulers of your community. In other words, come down from the cross.

So we have waited to see what Christ wanted. No word came. Younger ministers passed us up on their way to the "top." I already was fifty years old with an earned doctorate in education from the University of Rochester in New York. I am supposed to bring glory to my alma mater.

So here I am, waiting for Christ to do something, an old man on my way to the bottom, in a little church in Poway, California. Someone told me that "Poway" is an Indian term meaning "the end of the road." That does not help!

But you know what! I had determined "to fish or cut bait." "If there is a God in Heaven, a Christ who said He would build His Church, let’s find out." Kind of daring, I guess. Meanwhile some are saying we must go door to door and save souls. Oh well . . .!

I have stuck to my guns. It is thirty years later. The church is still less than a hundred in attendance, although it is growing slowly. We have not made any effort to build the church, the Spirit of God always seems to bring in the people we need for what we are doing.

Meanwhile, our outreach is impressive, I believe, in books going out, television, our two Internet sites, our daily essay on E-mail (over a thousand subscribers who read my rantings seven days a week). We still are not making any plans or trying to do anything. In fact, you are reading these words right now and I don’t even know who you are or where you live, maybe in Vietnam. We actually see Vietnam on our stat page for the WOR site, as well as France, England, Italy, the United Arab Republics, and other places you might not think of.

I prayed years ago that God would grant to me to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom wherever people breathe the air. I think He is answering prayer.

Meanwhile I am in the Lord’s prison. You know, resurrection power comes only from the cross, not from our religious efforts no matter how sincere or violent. We can try to twist God’s arm, but all we get are manifestations that seem to be the Holy Spirit but leave kind of a bad taste in our mouth When we think of Abraham offering Isaac, the numerous kinds of suffering the Apostle Paul endured, the deprivations of those heavenly witnesses mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews, we realize that God’s way is to reduce us to nothing, to remove all our ability to do anything, so that His wisdom and power might prevail.

Are you being denied what you want? Are you in a miserable situation? Pray earnestly that you will get what you want. But do not force your way out! In order to escape you will have to break God’s laws. The route to deception it to try to make our life on earth a pleasurable experience. Accept the trials God sends, and the blessings also. They are equally important.

When the Lord Jesus told us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him, He knew what He was saying. The greatest enemy we have, even worse than our sinful nature, is our self-will; our personal ambition. Our personal ambition is slain in our prison, slain by our cross. This is the purpose for the imprisonment. It is to kill our self-will.

When a self-willed person enters the ministry, what we have is self-will in the ministry. This is what we often see today. An ambitious person attempting to make a name for himself or herself.

I guess being a minister of the Gospel must appeal to people. Maybe it is better than working. For myself, this is not my choice. There are many things I enjoy doing. I would not have picked out the ministry for a vocation. I am in the ministry because Christ called me in a supernatural experience while I was in the Marine Corps during World War Two. Yes, some of us are still living. I am pasturing as a favour for my best Friend, the Lord Jesus. Otherwise I would be doing something I like better.

But, like Moses I think it was, I am looking forward to the reward from a grateful King. So I will keep on pasturing until He says "enough."

I know, from reading the Bible, that the—shall I say monkey business—that goes on today with all its hype and begging for money probably is not Divine Life coming from the cross.

We have had several "revivals" in the last several years. But you know what? I am waiting for God to move. I have been in Pentecost for sixty years. I think I will know when I see the real stuff. I haven’t seen it yet, but I believe genuine revival, the harvest rain prophesied for the last days, is at hand.

When it comes, you will know it and I will know it. There will be no more "big" preachers. It will be a "sackcloth" revival. Little people doing what the Lord has told them to do, and then fading back into the woodwork. Such people refuse to take the Glory. They want Christ alone to be magnified in their bodies.

So I invite you to wait with me in your own prison. Don’t try to be anyone special. Walk with the lowly of heart. Let’s see what our Lord Jesus Christ will do if we keep our hands off the Ark, because it certainly is coming down the road.


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