Between a Rock and a Hard Place

By Their Fruits

2011-04-22T12:18:00.000-07:00

For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Luke 6:43-46

Jesus Christ never minced words. When he called Herod a fox, he meant every word of it. When he called the Pharisees, Sadducees and scribes, “hypocrites,” he didn’t back up and say, “Oops, I didn’t mean that…let me find something more polite to label you!” Truth is truly never politically correct. He always said things exactly how he meant them.

My former pastor was notorious for similar statements, especially, “If He can’t say NO, you can’t say Lord!” In this case it is very fitting. He was very shoot-from-the-hip and blunt. We love him for it still to this day.

I’ve spent the evening in church last night and talking to a friend of mine who has more insight into people that is even believable at times. Things I endured in my life the past 8 years came slamming back this morning. Things talked about, conversations, body language that people used in the past, their actions, all of them started clicking together like pieces in a puzzle.

My friend thinks that Apostolic preachers are “empaths” because they are so in-tune with things around them, be it people or the Holy Ghost. She’s yet to admit that God could ever talk to a preacher, let alone a man or woman, we’re working on her. She does however believe in angelic and demonic activity!

So often I’ve forgotten things in God’s word that could have made my life a whole lot easier. Recent dealings with someone that I opened my heart to and fell in love with ended disastrously when they began to lie to me repeatedly. She said she wanted “spiritual guidance,” but Stone’s first law of spiritual leadership is “I can’t lead where you don’t follow.” I told her this repeatedly. She asked me to attend a denominational church with her that even if I’d been totally backslid would not have fed me spiritually. After 2-3 services that wasn’t working for me. She complained that I wasn’t going with her and I told her that I had a church she should attend. Four services later she had been baptized in Jesus name and filled with the Holy Ghost…unfortunately, at that point all growth stopped.

I don’t know how it is for you, I’m patient with new converts, but there comes a time with me when people do things that even non-Christians would do I begin to questions their actions, their honesty and their intentions. I’m not a judgmental person. I believe in working with everyone and meeting them at the point of their needs, hurts or trouble. Being honest with myself though, some people simply do not want help or see that they have a problem. It was the case with this young woman.

She projected the image of having it all together when we first met, even telling me that she was the kind of woman that I needed, educated, successful, stable, everything she said my ex-wives were not. However, after a few emotionally charged incidents, things changed almost like flipping a light switch and I realized I was dealing with something I had often dealt with in the past...An identical something.

She began to lie to me, first about small things. First she would tell me I said something or did something I did not do. Always an agreeable person, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt since we’d only been seeing each other and hanging out a few months. It wouldn’t be the first time I had ever told someone something then realized that the person I had told had been a previous date, or friend from church. This however quickly spiraled into something far more drastic. Soon everything I said was supposed to be “being critical” of her. I was supposed to always be “changing my story” when we would discuss past issues. These issues quickly became present issues, because no matter how often we tried to “talk things out,” she would never drop them and no amount of apologizing ever ended the matter. The next time we talked, she would bring them up again, and again, and again.

I started making it a point never to talk about previous relationships yet almost every time she would bring something up to channel the conversation back into that vein, or what I found she would deliberately misquote something said, simply to get me to correct them…then quickly tell me I was interrupting her. At one point she told me she was suicidal and wanted to kill herself. I immediately told her I wasn’t letting her out of my site and she agreed to stay with me.

She went to the barbershop and store with me that evening and she did not take off on her own, but she stared off into space like a zombie the entire time and then threw up in a bag in the car on Quantico…and I began to realize a little of what I was dealing with. Then when she went to work she vanished. A call to her command pretty much left me wondering when they did not forward the word of her threat up the command chain. Two days later she was back, telling me the person who took my call “knew her very well and knew she’d never do that,” so they didn’t notify the command. Those of you who have had military or government training in suicide awareness and training, know that this is a big no-no! You always forward suicidal threats up the chain of command.

She moved to a new apartment and first she lied to me and told me she was with an old roommate and it wasn’t costing her anything. A week later she forgot what she told me and said she was paying $2000 a month for an efficiency apartment…basically a hotel room. Other little lies followed, and being a former Marine NCO, I have great attention to detail when people talk to me. Then she lied to me about one of her friends, claiming she had never dated him. I knew it was a lie, and her friends quietly told me that she would go nuclear on them if she found out they told me...but yes they knew the guy that she claimed was just an old roommate, and they had dated. Then she later told me we weren't going to Missouri and Colorado together to meet each other's families and when I asked she said she was traveling alone. Another lie. At this point, I figured God doesn't reveal anything unless he plans to deal with it.

None of this was what I expected of a new convert who has just received the Holy Ghost, and although I know God doesn’t make us robots when we come to him, I’m pretty sure we all have a conscience. The thing about it is when I confronted her about the lies, she got angry and said she couldn’t believe I would call her a liar! No apology. No remorse. No repentance…nothing, but anger that I would even accuse her of something so obvious. I spoke to my parents about it and they told me to watch her eyes and body language, knowing I had been married to a woman in Florida who was mentally and emotionally ill. I didn’t realize back then just how ill until after I got out of the situation and met a friend of mine who worked as a therapist with mentally ill patients.

Over dinner one Sunday afternoon (long dinner…I think we were there for 6 hours) we talked and Karin wanted to know all about my past. She tells me she never really turns off, she’s always diagnosing people. I told her everything that I had been through and pretty much left out no major details and when I finished she told me, “Les, they were borderlines. Every single relationship you have been in has been with a borderline.” She told me she was diagnosing me the entire time we ate dinner and talked and it was actually interesting. I learned a lot about myself and my exs!

I had no idea what she meant by “borderline” then, but since then I have learned a lot. That was nearly a year ago. At that time she told me she wanted to know what about these kinds of women attracted me or what it was about me that attracted them. Finally she told me that female borderlines (borderline personality disorder) are attracted to strong male role models, successful, mature, protective, loving, affectionate…a daddy figure. They keep weak, spineless men around as their close friends, because they can manipulate them easily, but they want a strong daddy figure in their life too...as long as they don't get too close.

I figured her male friend who was drummed out of the Navy for being overweight and unable to hack it in even Navy PT, and unable to get or keep a job while he mooched off of her for the few years they were roommates...probably fit the weak-minded male roll Karin told me about that BPs tend to keep around them...and she told me that because I was too much of a Marine and wasn't willing to be manipulated she had bitten off more than she could chew and was running before her house of cards tumbled down...now that I had talked to several of her friends and family members about the BPD disorder. All her projections of a "perfect" life she tried to project to others was tumbling down around her. She told me the panic she was experiencing was normal when I told her about her calling and making the accusation about her mail being rerouted.

Karin likened a Borderline's closest friends to week-minded drones, basically people without two brain-cells to rub together, or easily influenced. They like to portray their selves as powerful people, but it's all just a facade. They desire power, but never really obtain it. It's just smoke and mirrors, thus the reason for them bailing the first time a BP get's near someone who knows what they really are. Karin told me that they won't get help or seek help from man or from God...unless something traumatic happens to them and they suffer a great loss. Whether an injury, losing a family member they've known for a long time, or a nervous breakdown, something has to force them to get help. They will not seek it of their own accord while they can still try to maintain their smoke and mirror projection of being in total control of their lives. That's sad.

BPs, like Sharon, have a "God complex" that makes them have to be in control of everything...and Sharon had already admitted to me that she had anger issues and was rebellious and had to always be in control of her situations. They perceive admitting they have a problem or seeking help, or even asking God to heal them as a weakness. Sadly, that's the only way they can be healed. I think that if they could focus their drive for control at throwing their need at the feet of Christ he would heal them instantaneously.

Karin told me that borderlines (75% are female) were traumatized in their childhood, usually between 3-9 years old, by sexual or physical abuse or abandonment. Something in them shuts off and they turn off their emotions. Unlike an adult who endures a traumatic experience, our emotions are mature and we learn to only close out people who are strangers or have harmed us, not those we love. We don’t blame others for something someone else did to us. Borderlines can’t do that. Once turned off as a child, their emotions never grow beyond the age they were at when they were traumatized. I’d been told this same thing by Norris, a counselor in Florida I talked to about my ex-wife. Molested at 9 and physically, emotionally and mentally abused, she had snapped and even as an adult she could not control her rages, often physically assaulting her kids, my kids, and me.

With the current girlfriend, I asked Karin about the lying and she told me they can’t help their selves. “Borderlines do that, Les. That’s all they know.” I can’t even give an exhaustive list of all the behaviors I’ve witnessed, but constant false accusations, mind games, lies, manipulations, belittling, ignoring other people’s feelings, are all tools of the trade for borderlines. Lies are the least of their deck of cards.

BPD splitting is one of their main characteristics of borderlines. It’s a switch between idealizing and demonizing others. In other words they either hate or love you, and can’t seem to accept anything in between as “normal.” It’s the whole “I hate you, don’t leave me,” reaction. That combined with mood swings tend to undermine relationships with friends, family and co-workers. Untreated, the symptoms worsen. Below are other listed symptoms from psychcentral.com. They want to rename the disorder to Emotionally unstable personality disorder. Either way, the results are the same. Parents (of both sexes) were typically reported to have withdrawn from the child emotionally, and to have treated the child inconsistently. Sad, I know.

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
Identity disturbance, such as a significant and persistent unstable self-image or sense of self
Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)
Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
Emotional instability due to significant reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
Chronic feelings of emptiness
Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
Transient, stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms from http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/symptoms-of-borderline-personality-disorder/

I mentioned in a previous blog of being called yesterday and being accused of rerouting her mail from another state back to Virginia. I was taken completely aback by the ludicrous allegations until I realized she actually meant it!

I’m generally sensitive to people’s needs, but having been married before to a borderline, I know they have no remorse whatsoever. Like King Saul, they can turn on the tears one minute and try to pin you to the wall with a javelin the next. There is no consideration to the consequences of their actions. They do not care who they hurt. Emotionally they are so detached that you can sit and tell them that what they are doing is hurting you and they will give not a single acknowledgement to what you said or what they are doing…then walk away and continue doing it! I’m shocked to my core when I see a person professing Christianity blatantly do things that violate God’s word with impunity but if you look into the Word of God you see why.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Romans 1:18-20

And when you see how they do not want to even consider that their actions are against the scriptures, you see why they are the way they are.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1:280-32

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was. 2 Timothy 3:1-9

Without natural affection…that flabbergasts me. When I look and see that Paul in the word of God almost 2000 years ago knew that the world in the last days was going to be a royal mess, it blows my mind. The word of God is so transparent. Having dealt with 4-5 borderlines in my life I still find the drama and lack of emotions among them totally amazing. I remember how empty sounding the threats were now, the suicidal statements sounded hollow. It wasn’t until I talked to Karin that I realized that generally they weren’t suicidal…although without treatment they can end up that way.

I’d spent weeks reading relationship books like, Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, Bringing Out The Best In Your Wife, by H. Norman Wright, and The Five Love Languages, by Dr. Gary Chapman. In addition to my daily Bible reading, I’ve been a very busy man trying to “learn what I wasn’t doing right” in my communication with women…until Karin told me bluntly, “Les, you aren’t the problem. You communicate fine.”

I felt like I wasted months, even years of my life, right then. I’d wasted my time trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t want to communicate beyond a superficial level…because communication builds knowledge and knowledge is power…and borderlines will never allow you any power. To know them is to know that they have problems, and that to them is the chance to destroy them or hurt them. They will not leave their self vulnerable and that’s what love does! They won’t allow it. For almost 5 months I beat my head against that wall. They won’t let anyone know they aren’t perfect and topple their long maintained house of cards. To them emotions mean pain and they can’t and won’t allow their selves that vulnerability.

In this case, no matter how beautiful, gentle and tender of an image this girl presented, I had to realize it was all a façade. Borderlines learn how to hide their disorder. They will go to any lengths to keep anyone from not only finding out that they are borderline, but to keep you from telling anyone they know about it or forcing them to get treatment or help.

I know this from personal experience. The first time I tried this in Florida 7 years ago the woman physically assaulted me, attacked my girls and then filed false charges against me to try and get me put in prison for something she did. She lied to our pastor continuously for 3 years, turning on the tears to get him to back away from the truth of the situation and manipulate him…then she’d come home and beat me and the kids brutally.

Later on after a “time of repentance” she attacked the kids again and that was the last straw. At the direction of an Army chaplain at my unit and my local pastor, I turned her in to Florida DCF. Two days later she filed for divorce and other than in court I never saw her again. Her father called me a few days later and apologized to me, saying his daughter was broken irreparably before he met her at 15 years old. He told me if he had known me before hand he would have warned me not to marry her. It had been 18 years since he had seen her and he’d never even met his grandchildren!

Regardless of the issues, disorders, or past trauma, Christians have the responsibility to obey the word of God. Lying, deceit, abusive behavior is not condoned by the word of God. Christ spoke specifically of this to John in Revelation stating no one who does those things will ever enter heaven.

And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. Revelations 22:10-16

I will continue praying and fasting that something will break in their lives and that God will grant them a chance to come to repentance. Ultimately the choice is theirs.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9

Flashbacks of Another Time, Another Place

2011-04-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

Today I got a call that took be back 4-6 years. I’d barely gotten a blog posted when someone I care about dearly, called me accusing me of forwarding their mail from Colorado to Virginia. Yes, I know people normally don’t do stuff like that but she has a situation that is getting ready to spin out of control in her life. Her emotions are random and totally out of control.

I’ve been gone on vacation for two weeks, driving all over Missouri and Alabama and have barely been home four days and haven’t even opened all of my own mail. I have no desire, need or motive to reroute someone else’s. I haven’t even been to the DNRP office to start getting my home on the market yet for sale. I’ve been too busy and when I get home at night I’m too tired to try and go anywhere or do anything. I haven’t even set down to a decent meal since Sunday down in Alabama. I’m living on tea and water basically.

I hate seeing someone I care about tailspin out of control emotionally, but there is nothing I can do physically for them. I’m doing the only thing I can do, pray and fast and seek God’s face for an emotional healing for her. I’ve been through this before…the exact same thing down in Florida. I also have another friend with the same disorder, but she is currently getting help and therapy. It’s not really treatable unless they want to get help…or unless God intervenes and heals them. At least the later is going to visit an Apostolic church and seek God for a healing.

A friend of the former told me to cut off communication and I had to an extent, only forwarding necessary information about mail being misrouted to my house and praying with or for them. The last two phone calls were completely hateful and bristling with a desire to find fault and cause strife. I’ve chosen not to respond in kind, keeping a calm voice, explaining I have nothing to do with their issues, mail, etc. They told me they don’t trust me, and I can’t help that. I’ve made close friends, ministers and family available to them to talk to and get to know more about me from those who know me best, but someone with emotional trust issues isn’t going to trust someone they’ve met and gotten to know, let alone a stranger they haven’t met! Honesty is key and unfortunately I have not received that in the past from this person. Even in talking to me today they revealed they had lied to me in the past. It hurts, but I also know it is part of their emotional hurt. Not pain. Not fear. It is simply what they do because of their disorder.

Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door. Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy. But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation. James 5:8-12

James knew that if we lied about something or held a grudge against our brother we would fall into condemnation…not just with them but with God. We have no prerogative in the word to hold a grudge against someone. Nor do we have a right to lie to, for, or against someone.

I’ve cut off contact with them and all I can do is pray that God will heal them before their situation gets worse, because every time God has dropped a borderline in my path, it was only a short time before they rejected the healing and restoration of God and spiraled out of control. God doesn’t reveal anything unless he plans to deal with it. You can play mind games with man, but you can’t play mind games with God!

http://www.bpdcentral.com/resources/basics/games.shtml

This Kind

2011-04-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

This Kind

In over 31 years of walking with God, I’ve encountered things as most Christians have that totally baffle them. Like most Christians my life and my walk with God had the typical ups and downs. Unlike most Christians though, I refuse to gloss things over and I think that that fact alone has been the saving grace of my walk with God. Integrity with one’s self is a prerequisite to being honest with God and your fellow man. I don’t say that with any pride either. Those who know me best know the things I’ve lived through, the embarrassments, humiliations, mistakes…and my losses.

Paul gave a list of the things he endured from the time Christ put him on his face on the road to Damascus, things he endured for the Truth, but also things he endured at the hands of nature and even false brothers in the church. Gloss it over all we want to, that still happens today. I think we have robbed Pentecost of the power of our testimony by trying to make everything politically correct and to protect offices and positions that do not need protecting.

We’ve been so dishonest with ourselves as a movement, hidden things…or tried to hide them…from the saints in the body of Christ that it is no wonder we have lost so many to attrition over the years, only to see them raise up websites and name names and list incidents where our people, our ministers and our organizations have acted with less than the dignity of a Christian in most cases, and in some simply defied the ordnances and principles of the Word of God. God have mercy on us as a movement who has truth…but who walk in such a dishonest fashion! I wonder how long as a movement we will last before God strips us of that truth and moves on to the next group, movement or church organization and reveals the truths of the Word of God to them and totally bypasses us as oneness people like he did the Jews. Don’t think he won’t. There is precedence for it in the word of God!

Paul never glossed anything over for his self or anyone else. He was very humble, but very blunt in his dialogue of all he endured, sparing no one in his dialogue:

Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also. For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise. For ye suffer, if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man take of you, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite you on the face. I speak as concerning reproach, as though we had been weak. Howbeit whereinsoever any is bold, (I speak foolishly,) I am bold also. Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? so am I. Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not? If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not. In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me: And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands. 2 Corinthians 11:18-33

Paul went on to talk about the visions and revelations he had received of God, but despite all his reproaches and the things he endured, he came down several verses in Chapter 12:10-11 and said.

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me: for I ought to have been commended of you: for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing.

In the face of all he had accomplished for God, and in the face of all he had endured carrying the Gospel, he announced to the world that he was nothing! God help us to have the same humility! I look back over all I’ve gone through, and what God brought me out of and the firestorms that I’ve lived through and have to realize that all the times I was on my face weeping over hurts, fears, losses, he was molding and shaping my life, my walk and the ministry he called me to. How must Paul have felt at times like these. In looking back he doesn’t tell about his personal feelings during these times. We see the mind of Christ in him though, the thought process we have to have to effectively minister to the hurting, bruised and broken in this hour.

And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved. 2 Corinthians 12:15

He understood that in ministering to the needs of people that some would never love him. We cannot produce a political elite among us that we somehow figure will be the only ones who will reach this generation. By so doing we have robbed hurting, wounded, broken people of healing and deliverance that Christ said all his believers would do in his name. God never followed the politics of an organization to determine who would and would not accomplish something great for him. He owes no allegiance to the organizational structure of men. He always seeks out a human need.

People who are wounded and need a physician will readily seek out a doctor. Those who cannot bring their selves the humility to admit publicly there is something broken that they cannot fix will always and forever hate and bite the hand that tries to minister to their wounding. Paul knew this unequivocally. Wounds in the body are readily evident. Those in the spirit, soul, emotions and mind are not. Nor can a half-hazard walk with God heal these wounded souls.

And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. Matthew 17:14-21

The last 8 years of my life I was in a massive storm. Unwittingly, the more I thought I knew about it, the less I knew. It wasn’t until the past year that I realized a small part of what God was doing in my life by the things he kept taking me into. I knew that when we fail a test, God will never let us pass on to the next level until we get the revelation of what he is wanting to do in us and we buckled down and actually pass the test, do what he wants us to do and fulfill the obedience he wants accomplished in us.

Jesus said that there are some things, some wounds, some conditions that don’t come out except by prayer and fasting. Up until that time his disciples had not fasted and he said so in his word. Christ’s answer was that while he was among them the disciples would not fast, but after he was taken away, they would. Prayer and fasting is the bedrock doctrine of the Apostolic church. We aren’t debating the New Birth here. You don’t get into the Apostolic church without the New Birth…but once you are born again of water and spirit there is one thing that we are lacking in…prayer and fasting!

In 30 years I’ve been in more churches than I can count off hand…but of those I can count on one hand the number of those churches who were given to fasting and prayer. When you walk into a church like that, you know it. You know when someone has reached past the hands of God and reached up to touch his face. If you don’t understand that statement, then pray and fast until you do.

The disciples had been sent out by twos into the nation and had cast out devils, healed the sick, raised the dead, opened blind eyes, made the lame walk…but even with all of that they came back and a man with a boy who was possessed of a certain type of demonic spirit (for the therapists we’ll just say he was clinically insane, suicidal, depressed, epileptic, bi-polar, borderline, multiple-personality disorder, schizophrenic, or whatever disorder you want to label him with). At any rate, the boy couldn’t get any relief and the father who loved his son was tormented. If you don’t think he was, think about raising a child like that!

Buckle up, lock yourself down, strap yourself in and get ready for turbulence. This plane isn’t coming in for a landing any time soon.

You never see in this passage that the child came to Jesus. Whether the child knew he had a problem or not is not recognized in this passage. All the child knew was pain, hurt and trauma from his earliest memory. He didn’t come running recognizing his need and fall down like the maniac of the Gadarenes. The child was nearly completely and totally consumed by what had befallen him from infancy.

It was the father that sought out the ministry, but you see no response from the child. Nothing is noted in scripture other than the fact that they could not cast him out. The ministry didn’t have the goods at that time and moment in history. Sorry, but truth sometimes hurts. We’ve returned to that time as a movement. Our forefathers were men and women of prayer and fasting. They were men and women of sacrifice. They weren’t the most popular show in town. They endured much as Paul did when Pentecost was in its infancy. Yet they had power with God. What have we got?

The father knew the child needed help. He came to the only one that could help him. We are still there today. The disciples were not given to prayer and fasting and for the past 30 years as a movement, neither have we except in limited measure among us. You never see where the disciples had the power even after all their exploits of being sent forth to heal and carry the gospel without purse or scrip, without two coats, without anything that would make them self-sufficient. They were totally and completely dependent on Christ. Today we have multi-million dollar edifices, million dollar homes and Gentiles paying Jewish tithes like they are still under the law…but I regress. That’s another article all together. We aren’t dependent on God for anything. If the entire city we were called to burns up and goes to hell tomorrow, we are fine with that, as long as we live fat, happy and comfortable until we cross over into Glory! Dear God help us….

In this child’s case, he didn’t even have the wherewithal to come to God and seek help himself. It fell to someone who loved him to come running to Jesus and entreat him for someone else. We aren’t quite there as a movement. A check of the world climate tells me we will be soon, whether we want to or not. The earth is groaning because intercessors are not. Earthquakes in Haiti, China, Japan have been prevalent in the news. Tsunamis, mudslides, floods, oil spills and now nuclear contamination are all over our news, but still the church dances along content to give itself to folly, lackluster lifestyles, prayerlessness, no sacrifice, no sincerity, no hunger for souls, not even aware of the times and seasons around us.

The church in the book of Acts turned the world upside down. Our generation prefers to blend in with the world, not raise a fuss or rock the boat.

I was shaken awake to my surroundings recently; due to the love of someone I could not help. I’d won a young woman to God, taken her to a church that preaches truth (few that there be in my area…and don’t attack me for this, it was even prophesied to me by a very well known evangelist in our movement. I’m merely relating fact.) and seen her get baptized in Jesus name and filled with the Holy Ghost…and then my world endured an earthquake.

As I said, honesty and integrity has always been the only saving grace to my walk with God. That integrity would not let me lie, or pretend to be something I’m not, even in the face of rejection by a minister who I love like a father. It would not let me lie to keep the wife I loved in the face of her mental illness, lying to the ministry and fighting a healing from God that was promised her in prophesy by two evangelists. It would not let me lie in court to keep custody of my children in order to counteract lies by my ex-wife, a godless backslider who has blasphemed the Holy Ghost and done spite to the Spirit of Grace. And this time it would not let me lie to keep the woman in my life I had fallen deeply in love with.

I’ve always been one to give people the benefit of the doubt, always looked for hidden godly potential in them, always desired to see them excel and grow and become more than they were. I never considered whether their growth and accomplishments for God would eclipse what I’ve done. It never registered with me. I simply don’t care. It’s not me that counts. It’s Him.

The girl in question is budding with potential. I saw this the first time we met and knew that she was special, yet over time I came to realize a deep-seated wound in her spirit and emotions that she admits to in private but would not admit publically. A prophesy came forth the week after she was filled with the Holy Ghost, declaring that God was going to heal her. I’d told her the same thing the day before. God confirmed his word and from that point on she began a steady withdraw from me. I’ve lived through this at least 5 times in my life. Each time I was told to give myself to prayer and fasting and that a healing would take place. Each time I fell, failed and lost.

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled. Do ye look on things after the outward appearance? If any man trust to himself that he is Christ's, let him of himself think this again, that, as he is Christ's, even so are we Christ's. 2 Corinthians 10:3-7

I’ve never doubted the power of our spiritual arsenal. I’ve always known that intercessory prayer was like heavy artillery in the spirit world, able to topple the moste hardened bunkers of demonic and manly opposition. Yet, my pastor spoke on “dual consciousness” a few weeks ago as I’ve mentioned in various blogs I’ve written, but this time it had a deeper meaning to me in my walk with God.

I was repeatedly told over the pulpit to get my eyes off of the things going on around me in the physical by ministers in 3 states and to focus on the Spirit, the things we can’t see. Still, the more I prayed, the more I fasted, the worse the situation looked. It still does…in the physical. Finally I was rebuked for walking in fear and not faith and I knew that there were things I had to do in my life and walk with God. It was time for self-examination at a level I’ve not done in all my years.

The verse that has hounded me from 2 Corinthians 10 for 8 years has been verse 6…”And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.” Am I obedient? Have I submitted every area of my life to God and removed all the “leaven” from my life. A little sin poisons the whole life, much as a little leaven will leaven an entire loaf of bread. Self examination isn’t fun, not if you are honest with yourself and God. It’s crippling us as a movement.

Think I’m blowing smoke? Whatever happened to Old Time Pentecost when someone repented and got right with God and they went to everyone they had hurt, offended and did wrong and apologized and repented to them to? We’ve lost something as a body of believers. Sit and soak in that for a bit. Don’t get out until you are pruning….

I’ve been soul searching, clearing out things in my home, my life, my heart…I don’t even care if they aren’t sins if they are weights or things that hinder my walk with God, they have to GO! If they are things that hinder my prayer life, they have to go. If they are things that hinder my bible reading, they have to go. Are there friendships that aren’t producing fruit to win souls? They have to go. Lifestyles? Have to go. Do I have ambitions that aren’t in alignment with the word of God? They have to go. Are my life-goals in accordance to God’s will? I have to pray about this. How about my diet? Am I pleasing to God in the things I am taking in? Or do my habits encourage fasting and sacrifice? Does my fasting follow biblical principles? (I’ll get on this soon. Just hang on.) This area needed looked into.

I started with the refrigerator then moved on to my computer, my music, my games and my home. Anything that is a distraction has to go…a permanent partial fast from frivolity.

I’ve begun a fast and my closest friends know that it is common place with me. It’s something God has given me the ability to do. I will not go into details. If you don’t know me well enough to know, then maybe it’s something you should inquire about. I found out from Evangelist Keith Clark many years ago that there is a difference between fasting and being anointed to fast. When God anoints you to do something, it’s kind of like Sampson…even the jaw-bone of an ass can be a mighty weapon.

All the years of having friends with mental and emotional wounds came to a head recently and although I’ve tried to ignore the nudge of the Spirit to shut the door, push away the plate, plant my face in the carpet and give myself to fasting and prayer for…a season…can no longer be ignored. In this case I have two friends in particular dealing with the same infirmity. One admits it under duress. The other will only admit it in private in generalization but denies anything specific. Here is what has hamstrung me for 8 years:

This is the fast he will never hear or look on!

Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. Isaiah 58:3-4

This is the fast that God will recognize:

Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

And this is what he will do for the person who humbles their self in the fast he has called for:

Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward. Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. Isaiah 58:3-12

I’m not sure when I will blog again. I’m not sure what the Lord will answer me. I only know that I must do what I’ve been directed of the Holy Ghost in prayer and from the Word. Please keep me in prayer.

Sharon told me recently to make sure I remembered a sermon preached recently about being pruned. Some trees don’t bloom for several years after being pruned. Now it’s time. Thank you, Sharon.

The Warrior, the Messenger and the Minstrel

2011-04-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

For several months now I have not put words to paper, nor picked up a pen, or written anything on my laptop. Despite the times and technology I still go to pen and paper for my deepest thoughts. Sometimes those bleed over into my articles. Looking back over my blog I’ve not written much for 2 years. A year ago I was beaten down so much spiritually that I wanted to break my vow made in December 2003 to never walk out of church or on God again.

I’d been 10 years out of the church at that time. I was pushed and urged back to God by a woman who hungered for spiritual things…but did not desire the corrective actions in her own life that are a necessity in a walk with God. At first I thought she was just a massive control freak, and some of that changed after we married…briefly. Ministry prayed about this with us and to this day, my father knows, as I do, that it was the will of God. I bear no bitterness against Him or that pastor. He’s gone on to his reward for things he did after the fact. I say that without fear of reprisal. It has come to that now….

For two years I have sought shelter in a congregation at the behest of my former district Superintendent, a great man of God that I respect and who I will admit used to intimidate me greatly…until I needed his help and he offered counsel without being judgmental like some in my past. I was directed to ask if I was in good standing and the man he sent me to would only give a politician’s answer and say…You are neither in good standing or bad standing. I don’t know you that well…even with the backing of my district superintendant. Still, I felt God direct me to stay despite his waffling, simply at the guidance of my bishop.

My first visit to his office was a disaster. He spent over an hour making smart-aleck remarks to everything I told him I’d been through and that my family had been through in 30 years in the church. The conversation ended at his office door when he smirked and said, “I really don’t think that your calling is what you think it is.” Oddly I had not told him what I felt my calling was. I told him he came along six years too late for that. I’d been beaten half silly until I accepted it, and afterward it was confirmed by my former pastor and several minister friends…but such is the politics of Pentecostalism.

I told him that I had been ready to walk out of our organization 6 years before and God had dealt with me to stay because he had something for me to do. The pastor immediately smirked again and said, “Yes and it’s been six years and you still haven’t accomplished it!”

Well, It’s almost over. ;) Give it three months, my friend. I am almost out of here!

Four months later Evangelist Freddy Clark prophesied to me for nearly an hour, totally contradicting the smart-aleck remarks spoken to me in that office and reaffirming everything my former pastors and minister friends had spoken over me.

After that meeting, my wife, (now ex-wife) turned to me in the car and said, “What’s wrong with him? All he did to you in there for an hour was gouge and try to insult you. Why was he doing that?”

She’d been in and out of the church most of her life and should have known why, but I explained to her that our previous pastor had already been there before we spoke and I had been warned by the Holy Ghost not to mention it during our visit no matter how often he attempted to direct the conversation in that direction.

God knows a carnal ambush when he sees it. I’m not being disrespectful. Even great men of God get carnal at times. It happens to the best of us. Sometimes there are dry places. I was told this had been going on for some time and has extended the two years I was here. For whatever reason, God had sent me there and didn’t want me saying anything, just passively waiting.

For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim:
Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; and shall fear the LORD and his goodness in the latter days. Hosea 3: 4-5

There are times when you walk through dry places. In my case this was a really dry place for two years. I often got words from saints in the church, my personal time and bible reading alone with God, or visiting ministers and missionaries, but most of the time I sat before a man who despite the leading of the Spirit to preach, tried to force God to let him teach every time he got in the pulpit. He tore into my wife the very next visit, prying into things she had not even told me about, and uncovering bitterness at ministry in her past, rebellion, hatred of her former pastor…I kept being a buffer and interjecting comments to keep him from being spiritually abusive, but I knew what he was doing. Afterwards he denied that he was deliberately gouging her wounds, and even as I write this I realized what he was doing…he was trying to get her goat or mine so we would leave…without telling us directly to get out.

Three months later my wife had endured three miscarriages, gone into adultery and took off. She did not trust the pastor after that incident and we never had our third and final visit. That will be the day I leave. There were many times I came into church hurting after my wife left and we went to court, but there was only one time pastor ever approached me before the church and asked them to pray for me. For the rest of the two years he completely ignored me, even emails and calls. I know when I’m black-balled. I went into two extended fasts and asked God to tie his building fund and new building to my situation and for 2 years it has not budged. The buyer for their old building backed out of their contract and it has not budged an inch, but then again neither has the pastor, so go figure. J

There are times I can enjoy good Godly teaching, but I also knew I needed anointed preaching and there were times I’d walk in and the joking would start in the pulpit and I’d feel the anointing backing away and I’d stomp my foot and pray, “God, I’m tired of the preachers family comedy routine every night in the pulpit followed by a dry morsel. Rebuke him for his folly in the pulpit and either he speaks as the oracles of God or silence him!”

He turned red as a beet and shook himself in the pulpit as the anointing hit him and he began to preach everything I was feeling in my spirit. It reminded me of a big Duroc hog we raised as kids shaking himself from sleep. He bellowed and stomped up and down on the platform and even said he didn’t know what had come over him.

I have blogged about wanting to walk out of that church in the past and a tongues and interpretation and then a prophesy came forth immediately, saying not to leave, not to walk out. I endured for a year more, going into several extended fasts that pretty much whittled me down to nothing. I visited camps out of state and minister friends of mine helped me and gave me guidance advice and encouragement.

My parents visited several times, seeing the same things in the services and more. Bro. Clark had prophesied over me that (just like my father) nothing would ever be hidden from me when I walk into a congregation anywhere, that the skeletons will immediately fall out of the closet and no one, not even the ministry will be able to hide anything. My father had often used the skeleton analogy and I laughed when Bro. Clark told me this. He then told me not to seek membership or licensing where I was at. He said I needed to be free to speak what God gave me and if I took a membership, position or office they would control me. He told me I didn’t need their pulpit and when God gave me a message that all I’d have to do is walk into the congregation and they would have to preach it…and yes, that works very well.

Recently I started sliding back, not attending services. But God has a sense of humor. I met a young woman who said she wanted a closer walk with God and I was in a quandary just as Bro. Clark had prophesied over me, because I was running out of churches in my area to take or send new converts to. I visited one local minister but knew he was a charismatic cowboy and didn’t preach it straight down the line.

I eventually took her to church where God told me to attend after several weeks of attending with her at various places she wanted to try out. I finally told her I couldn’t. I would starve to death spiritually. Our first visit they did to her what they do to me…look right through her and ignored her. I’m not bitter about this. It actually works for me. If he ignores me he’s fine and I’m fine. God is the judge.

Still Sharon told me she wanted spiritual leadership and she was looking to me for this and pushing me back toward God at the same time, something I had prayed about for many years. Criticize me if you wish, but I’d already fallen deeply in love with this young woman, who was unlike anyone I have ever known. She still has a hard time accepting this because of past hurts and abandonment issues. It doesn’t make it any less true. I put this out there even knowing that some would criticize me for it.

That week the pastor actually sent me an email…replying to an email that he told me he had not received…about whether a man who shoves someone into a shark tank or pool of piranhas is guilty, or the other two men standing by with life rings and ropes who could pull him out..but don’t. He had told me once that he did not get my email and to resend it. I did and he never replied to it either. When he replied to me it was from my first email…the one he told me he never received…I’ll let that sink in for awhile.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Galatians 6:7

I told him the young lady’s perceptions and the pastor immediately made an effort to recognize her next service. I’m very protective of my new converts. For over 30 years in the church I’ve had all my lambs slaughtered by saints and ministers alike who did not want to take them under their wings or who thought they weren’t their flavor. I determined this would not happen to Sharon. Two services later she had been filled with the Holy Ghost and baptized in Jesus name. Thanks Sis. Kitty and Bro. Morado! The problem was she was getting ready to take leave then head to a few months of school and then head to Afghanistan on deployment with the US Navy.

My quandary from day one since meeting Sharon was doing the right thing. I didn’t want to spook her and I knew that there were things bothering her and things that had happened to her in her life that she needed healing from. God has always sent hurting people to me and I’ve done my best to help them. Some of you are my best friends to this day and I pray I have honored your friendship while helping you with a Word when you needed encouragement, even as you have me. Some of you are in prophetic ministry. Others of you are prophetic intercessors and prayer warriors. I cherish you all.

Most of you know what I endured in Florida. No need to go over an old lessons-learned, but this time God dropped someone very special in my life, someone tender-hearted, sensitive to God and gentle with a passion and hunger for the things of God. Unwittingly I touched an open wound in her spirit and since that time I’ve been on damage control, staying in prayer and fasting for her. Shortly after she received the Holy Ghost I spoke to her about God wanting to heal her wounded spirit. She instantly shut herself off and I knew I was in trouble. I took her home angry, and immediately called my father and told him all that had happened.

He chided me for forgetting that people who come to God and get the Holy Ghost don’t always get an immediate healing. I knew this but my desire to see her made whole completely over-rode my common sense in thinking she would trust me with her wound. Obviously she did not. I told dad about the weight in my chest and how I felt there would be a prophecy, or tongues message to her the next day in church. Pastor preached the next morning and as soon as he finished, one of our associate pastors cut loose in a powerful prophecy that said pretty much the same thing I had said the day before. I felt it hit, said as much and turned to her and told her, “This is for you, Sharon.”

Big mistake…She shut me off again and it made things worse. My father told her on the way home that I had told him it was coming the day before, but I’m pretty sure she knew anyway. He told me later to just back away and let her soak for awhile, that when the Word of God goes forth, it gets where it needs to go. He began to encourage me to back off a bit and let her learn and get into the Word and under the anointed preaching.

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

Pastor Arnold use to tell us that the most frustrating thing we know about God is the things we know he is capable of…but does not do. I knew Sharon was promised a healing, but I’ve dealt with so many who had been prophesied similar things and eventually threw the promises of God away. I never told her all the frustrations I dealt with. Helping people has always been my hunger, but also very frustrating. She admits to having a hurt, but I know it is something only God can heal.

I took a strong rebuke in the Holy Ghost when I visited my current district superintendant’s church almost 50 miles away 3-4 weeks ago and he got up to do a baby dedication and instead ripped into me for not having faith but FEAR! God had already promised me everything would be alright in our situation, but here I was fretting like a new mom with a colicky, feverish baby. I had already placed the situation with Sharon on the altar and like so many of us do…went and picked it up again, put it back again, picked it up again, put it back on the altar again. He may not have known who he was preaching too, but I sat there repenting the entire time he was blasting away…and afterward he told us that was the polite version. (That’s my line!) God has a sense of humor.

Even though she was in full-blown “fight or flight” mode, God had dealt with me through the ministry over the pulpit that everything was going to be okay between us. As Bishop said, the problem is we don’t trust God when he speaks to us. He said, “You can’t have fear and faith. They can’t live in the same house.” This was baby food!

Here I was a 30 year Christian choking on milk. Someone mind burping me? Just don’t hit so hard!

I was in contact with friends and family members, God revealed some things I had not known in the situation, and eventually I got a grasp on everything, the big picture if you will. I knew I was dealing with someone hurting, indecisive, unable to trust, fear of abandonment and rejection if anyone “knew” what they were really going through inside, fear that my feelings for them were not real.

God spoke so clearly to me from the ministry that night and said, Love her anyway! Don’t walk out on her. Love like I loved you when you were going through hell on earth and didn’t know which way to turn. Love like I loved you when you were confused. Love like I loved you when you were abandoned. Love like I loved you when you were lonely. Love like I loved you when you were hurting. Love like I loved you when you didn’t love me in return!

The very next conversation with my father and with Alex, a friend of hers, they both repeated what came over the pulpit…”Love her, Give. Don’t expect anything in return. Love like Christ.”

Things continued to spiral out of control. Nothing I said seemed to get through, or got twisted out of context. Alex would check with me to make sure things he was told wasn’t true. I’d open up and tell him what was said, prayed, written. Good man. Great listener. Not Spirit filled yet, but I believe for him.

I’d spoken to a therapist friend of mine during all the confusions and she had confirmed what I was going through. It’s funny when people who don’t have the Holy Ghost confirm what God says to you from his word or from the ministry. I’ve even had it happen in a courtroom! In this case it happened repeatedly and I got a great testimony in to this woman. She knows people, but I know the God of the whole earth! Is anything too hard for God?

When telling her about her field as opposed to what our pastor referred to as “dual consciousness,” living in this world…but walking in the Spirit she was deeply interested and when I told her about speaking in other tongues she perked up and wants to visit the church and see and experience it for herself. She told me even though she doesn’t go to church, that as a therapist she’s had patience describe angelic and satanic visitation in such detail that she knows they aren’t lying!

Yes, I’m reaching for everyone I can possibly reach before God yanks me out of here!

My greatest quandary right now is not backing away as she instructed me to do…cut and run…but to do as admonished by the ministry and take a non-aggressive stance, passive, as Alex said, and my father, and wait for her to come around. Days of silent treatment don’t hurt me anymore. I had asked God to shield my heart and protect my spirit from wounding, and those days I throw myself into prayer and fasting and study…and I’ve been given more details into the entire situation. God doesn’t leave you walking blind. When you need wisdom, you ask for it! God only knows I need wisdom this time in my life.

Proverbs 2:1-11

[1] My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee;
[2] So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding;
[3] Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;
[4] If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures;
[5] Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.
[6] For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.
[7] He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly.
[8] He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints.
[9] Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path.
[10] When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul;
[11] Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee:

Last night while laying in bed I was reading the bible on my phone, and put in an old message from Evangelist Eli Hernandez, an old prophet of God who has blessed me many times in the past and spoken a word over me when coming out of my personal hell several years ago.

His message hit me like a tidal wave as he spoke on Adversity and said that when things start shaking around us and God starts getting ready to do something mighty for us, that the devil starts attacking. Understand that when the devil attacks it’s because he is scared. He’s afraid of something you are about to do. I told Sharon this exact same thing 3 weeks ago and she told me she didn’t believe it. The message confirmed this to me as instruction was given to pray God would dispatch angels to our loved ones. Send them to protect. Send them to direct. Send them to heal. Send them to reveal…all according to the will of God, not our will. That’s always where we choke, because God’s will never seems to run identical to our will!

I prayed and I asked God to dispatch angels. I asked God to send her three angels, a warrior angel to fight for and protect her, a messenger angel to direct her, guide her and speak to her, and a ministering angel to provide comfort and heal her hurt.

But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? Hebrews 1:13-14

The only thing left would have been a “worship angel” but they all fell with Lucifer. That’s where we come in…perfecting praise to take his place as vessels of worship to the Almighty. No wonder the enemy hates us so much!

Bro. Hernandez said you can always tell when someone believes the message…they start seeing results! Last night, I believed the message! ALS

To the Politician....

2010-08-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

One would be a fool to think that an office of man-made administration supersedes an office of appointment by the Most High. Let God send me a beggar with a Word from God in his mouth rather than an arrogant politician with a license to tell me only a word if it best suits his political agenda and the building of his personal kingdom.

Answer me, oh intelligent one...who is in authority over you? The bishop of your state? ...Or the outcast shoe salesman that God calls to send warning to you in your church where you reign supreme by right of "lineage, passage, appointment or privilege."

God's getting ready to upset our preconceived notions of "decency and order" and hierarchy of leadership. As with the Sanhedrin and High Priests of old, God is getting ready to shake up those who call their selves "leaders" and the "authority" in the Apostolic Pentecostal circles.

If you think God won't do it...step to the front of the line. He's going to restore five-fold ministry to the body and shatter the myth of "pastoral" or "ministerial" fellowships. As was prophesied at Ohio Camp Meeting last year, God will do it no matter whether you like it or not. It was spoken again this year.

And to the one who could not tell me to my face after several direct requests as to whether God called him to the city he's in or not...You know who you are and you know the answer is NO, and it's time to stop trying to build your own kingdom and move on before he sends in a Samuel of old to send you on your way. I spoke to you bluntly that night and yet you would not hear me... even when it hit you in the face. It's over. Don't make him send someone to remove you from your office like your predecessor.

Pentecostal Egg On The Face....

2010-06-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

How embarrassing that we have a non-Apostolic concept of "leadership" and "ministry" among us.

What are we going to do when we stand before God and he turns and looks at some "insignificant" man or woman we walked all over in our churches and asks THEM, "Did you tell them what I told you to tell them?" And we look in amazement as that insignificant one says, "Yes, Lord, but they rejected me because I wasn't part of their clique!"

...And God turns and looks us in the face and says..."Why didn't you listen to my messenger? I sent them from outside your churches because no one would carry this message to you from within your congregations. Depart from me. I never knew you!"

Jer.29
[19] Because they have not hearkened to my words, saith the LORD, which I sent unto them by my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them; but ye would not hear, saith the LORD.

Hey modern Pentecost...UPCI, PAW, COOLJC, ALJ, ALFI, etc., etc., let me break you in on a dirty little secret...God never stopped doing business the same way he always did business. Yes, Christ came, but he never stopped sending his prophetic messengers. Don't believe me? Take it from his lips.

Matt.23

[34] Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:

[35] That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
[36] Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
[37] O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

God will restore 5 fold ministry in the Apostolic movement no matter how many of his men and women we reject. He will bypass us if we don't stop being Pentecostal ministerial fellowships and organizations totally disconnected from the Body of Christ we claim to be "over" and start becoming the church of the Living God. We've lived this way under non-apostolic governance so long that we've disenfranchised ourselves from the very congregations that God set us IN...NOT OVER! Don't crucify me yet...he said he's coming back for his SAINTS...he never once said he's coming back for his pastors!

Matthew 20:25-27
[25] But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.
[26] But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;
[27] And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

Ephesians 4:11-12
[11] And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
[12] For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:

Hey there, preacher, pastor, evangelist, bishop...Big Kahuna...how many revivals have been stopped in our nation and our world because God dropped a broken, bruised, sickly lamb in our laps in the form of a battered, bruised, hurting, wounded person...or even a backslider, be they saint, minister or messenger...but instead we abused them, ignored them -- or worse stripped them and sheared them instead of healing, helping and sheltering them? Ezekiel 34 is going to kill us on Judgment Day!

Ezekiel 34: 1-8
[1] And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
[2] Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks?
[3] Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock.
[4] The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.
[5] And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered.
[6] My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill: yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and none did search or seek after them.
[7] Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the LORD;
[8] As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flock;

Jeremiah 10:21
[21] For the pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the LORD: therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered.

How many revivals in just your district or state have been canceled, or put on hold, because we grieved the Holy Ghost? Come on, be honest once before you die! How many revivals were squashed in entire districts because God sent a situation into the church and revealed it for correction and God's ministers would not correct sin? I'm getting where you live now. Come on politics of Pentecost....how many senior board members, seasons saints, heavy tithe payers, or even our minister buddies have we refused to offend when we knew they were doing someone wrong? That's okay, pretend it never happens....

We are no better that the people of Israel 2000 years ago.... To the Ananiases and Sapphiras of modern Pentecost, let it be known, we are only 500 funerals short of a full-blown revival in our nation. Get ready. It's coming. Beware what side of the pulpit it falls on this time. We won't beat the news crews out of our assemblies when that happens. So much for bad press! Since we've created a non-apostolic model of leadership, God's going to start where we are since we won't come to him and he's going to thoroughly purge his floor, starting with the leadership.

Call me a liar if you want to. It's coming, Pentecost. No Oneness organization will remain untouched. If they bear His name and His Spirit, he's going to pluck up out of his body and his kingdom every thing that offends Him before the last day revival harvest. Are you hearing me now?

East Coast UPC Follies: Good reading if you aren't a politician

2010-04-12T06:32:00.000-07:00

(Editor's note: I have chosen to edit this blog article and put in the actual states where this situation happened, mainly because the district superintendent in this particular situation was an honorable man and I feel did what was right ethically and morally. I do this because in over 30 years in Pentecost, that is a FIRST!)

I have not put pen to paper or hand to keyboard to write in nearly 4 months. For the few of you who follow my blogs, I'm sorry. I will not say the Lord has not spoken...but much of what I've endured the last 10 months has been more of a personal nature and I've always felt the best messages were the ones that worked over the minister first before feeding any flock! Let it stew a little bit…it will only get better. I've withdrawn for a time to reflect and seek shelter from the storm and the attacks of men and false brethren...and even false ministers. I expect to be attacked by wolves, not by shepherds! We are definitely in the very last of the last days.

When I first entered this storm in February 2009, there were several things brought to my attention in the Spirit and as the storm grew in intensity, several tongues and interpretations and prophesies followed. As things grew worse on the home front with my wife, following 2 miscarriages and her apparent infidelity, culminating with her running off in June 2009...after only 9 months of marriage, I began to see many things take place in my life and walk with God.

For 15 months now, I have sat, unused, in the church where I currently attend. I left a church in Virginia where I had worked tirelessly for 3 years, trying to pay my dues and pour water on the hands of the ministry and be the best right-hand man my pastor could ever have. However, after confronting him quietly in private about setting aside biblical holiness and matters concerning licensing of ministers in the UPCI, he chose to lie to me and tell me that his presbyter, district board and District Superintendent knew about his violations and condoned them, saying they "knew of it, they do not disagree." It took only 2 phone calls to determine that this was a blatant lie against his leadership on the sectional and district levels. Still, his presbyter angrily told me (his words) to “seek licensing in another organization, because you won't fit in with the UPC."

Now that is a relief!

The district Bishop in the state was notably upset when I called and brought the entire matter to his attention, especially at hearing that the presbyter told me to find another organization to be licensed with...in a district struggling to find young ministers to Pastor and start new churches. I was even a part of their Timothy Group of aspiring young ministers and he knew this. He instructed me to move my membership outside the state and sit under my current pastor, a man he knew to be strong in the Word and doctrine. He told me he knew by talking to me that I knew the Word and had been among us a long time and that I would do well in his church.

I told him about the former minister who was under his leadership following me out of state to the new church and ran to our current pastor in private before we even got to sit down and talk with him. He told me to ask the new pastor if I was in good standing and if I was told no...to leave and find another church where I was in good standing…difficult as there were no other churches in a 50 mile radius in the UPC that I had not been to or where the former pastor did not have close minister friends. Man I hate politicians!

During the time my wife was here though, she watched that former pastor turn against me for confronting him in private for leaving holiness. I told him that God had dealt with me that I was not the first person to confront him on that issue. He immediately called me a liar, declared I was bearing false witness against him (to his face?) and said that no one had ever left his church because of him leaving holiness. That day on the way home I took my wife out to eat and there in the restaurant sat the family that God had showed me had left the church 8 months before because of him no longer preaching holiness and allowing any kind of dress even on the platform. They explained their reasons for leaving…and God confirmed his Word and the prophecy while my wife was there to see it happen.

She later saw our former pastor follow me to the new church as mentioned above (after calling me and yelling at me for 2 hours during one service until my cell battery died). He didn’t just go to the new pastor before we got to sit down with him at our first conference…He also discarded ethics and discussed the matter with a visiting evangelist...who then decided to speak to yet another visiting evangelist about the matter.

I guess they figured they had me boxed-in because the evangelist took it on himself to take shots at me from the pulpit several times, steadily growing bolder with each service. The new pastor immediately pulled me aside and directed me not to tell anyone at all about what had happened to me in my last church! Hmm, Paul didn't have a problem telling when he suffered at the hands of false brethren, had someone leave him or abuse him. He told the whole world in his letters and counted it as loss, suffering all his afflictions for the cross.

My final word on that subject is this...Sorry, but you might micromanage things in your congregation, but over a year later I have not applied for even general membership in your local assembly, let alone "covenant membership." As I told you that day, I've been a covenant member with Jesus Chris now for over 30 years. I don't need your piece of paper and that goes all the way up to the top, your license, your fellowship, or your individual or organizational approval. I'll be here when the organization is a thing of the past. I'm only seeking one man's approval and you aren't him, judging by the lack of nail scars in your hands and whip marks on your back.

Oh, and P.S....no one will ever silence my testimony again, ever! Not you, not anyone. Mark it down. One man tried years ago. He's now paying for it dearly. If my God took me through my storm, then this is MY testimony. If you don't like it, I'm sorry. As a former pastor of mine would say, go sit in the corner and suck your thumb over your paper cut. I'm going to tell my testimony everywhere I go. God took me through my storm, not you, Jack! If you want to try to black-ball me, go right ahead.

Sorry, brethren, I've been through worse...FAR WORSE! I had and have a front row seat in watching how God handled this one. I took your beatings five years ago and again this year...until my Dad stopped by and paid a visit and slapped all your little petty obstacles aside. He proved he could whip your dad nearly 2000 years ago. Never lost a battle...before, or since! I love it when he flexes his muscles. When this blog is done I'm going to publish the one I wrote from my personal Euroclydon down in Florida. It's been waiting in the wings long enough. Friends in the PAW told me I should document my testimony of all God brought me through, so I did. It makes the situations of this past year pale in comparison...but back to the current distress.... ;)

One night my new pastor was out of town and that visiting evangelist decided to grind his axe further. Based on the lies my former pastor told him, he took a full-frontal swipe at me during a sermon as he was stepping down off the top of the platform toward the floor of the sanctuary in mid-sermon…the Holy Ghost slapped him in mid-step and knocked him back up on the platform, defying the law of gravity! The look on his face was a priceless one I'll never forget -- as the lights came on in his eyes! Maybe he'd had something like that happen before in his ministry, or possibly he just knew he'd over-stepped, because the look in his eyes was like…UHOH!

(My wife had had a dream the night before that this evangelist and his wife would ultimately attempt to divide the church there against our new pastor and told me the details of it. Giving credit where credit is due...With all her failures, I learned later on that my wife's dreams were in tune...probably because the dreams didn't come from her!)

I think about that time in his sermon, this visiting evangelist realized what he had done something wrong, either he'd been fed some misinformation...or he was up against something he shouldn't be up against. My wife looked at me and said, "He meant that as a swipe at you." I just turned and looked at her and said, "He won't make that mistake again."

Now I've seen preachers knocked completely out of the pulpit for that sort of thing in the past, both in my childhood when my father was attacked from the pulpit by a backslidden minister who didn’t like his holiness standards and attacked him on his convictions, but also when I came back to God after 10 years out of church and something I said rubbed the fur of a pastor the wrong way who was stealing from his church...and while it had not happened every single time I'd come under attack, it happened enough to make an impression on my life!

The funny thing is I didn’t get to read Frank Bartleman’s book on Azusa Street until 2005…only to realize many of the events he described as happening at Azusa had been going on in my life since I was a child. Even though I'd told my wife about those situations before we were married, she knew about them...but seeing is believing and she got to see this happen first-hand that night!

I bowed my head while the evangelist followed up on his frontal attack and tried taking several indirect jabs at me as he continued his sermon and I prayed a simple but blunt prayer, "God, I'm not going to mess with this little peacock and his UPC backdoor politics, perfect DA haircut and $2,000 suits any more. He's got the pastor's ear here, and even though they were lied to and don't know it yet, I'm not going to put up with any more of his attacks. Please remove this idiot from the congregation however you have to do it!" (Sorry for the bluntness, but I'm real when I pray. I don't mince words and God doesn't mince His actions. Food for thought, but read on.)

It was only a few minutes later and the tone of the sermon changed and the evangelist got onto the subject of money and financing his "Holy Ghost Crusade," ... and a lengthier stay at the church for him and his wife and I felt a great big belly flop happen in the Spirit. Several people immediately got up and stormed out and it got back to the pastor that week. The meetings were canceled and the peacock and his wife moved on...and the pastor had the dubious honor of getting up during the next service and apologizing for the evangelist being "taken wrong" at what he had said and how the way he was taken was not what he had meant. It's amazing the things we gloss over in Pentecost. I like it better when God labels things. He calls a spade a spade and leaves it at that. We just stick to politics as usual and try to make everything white...or just gray areas. ;) Jesus called Herod a fox. It stuck.

In a subsequent meeting with our new pastor in Maryland, several things happened that set the wheels turning in my life to launch me into another direction. I never did discuss what happened with my previous pastor in Virginia…or his conversation with my current pastor. I did however detail many of the things that had happened in my life since coming back to church in December 2003, and although many of my ministerial friends in the PAW stood in awe at what God had done in my life and the testimony he gave me, the new pastor looked at me and in a deeply sarcastic tone said, “I’m just shocked that you think that this is the will of God for your life.”

When I told him I would not even be in the UPC except that God had dealt with me back in 2004 and told me to stay, that he had something for me to do, he rebutted, “Yes and it’s been 5 years and you still haven’t accomplished it!” He said he had doubts about my calling and I told him I had none. God settled that many years ago, leaving no doubt about the matter. You don’t argue with God when he decides to openly reveal and confirm your calling in open court and before the ministry. He had no way of knowing that though.

On the drive home, my wife commented that the new pastor had been very antagonistic toward me and even rude with me during the brief meeting and wondered why I didn’t bring up the conversation we both knew he had with the former pastor. I told her it was because that was what they were expecting…and I had been admonished to be silent about it. A few weeks later we had another sit-down with him and he ignored me the entire time and seemed to be going after my wife, digging into her past.

He told me later he had not intended to be antagonistic, or prying (I do not believe that to this day. He was definitely antagonistic, but I’ve given the benefit of the doubt while waiting to see what God is doing) but said he had merely wanted to learn about her history. In so doing she revealed bitterness against an elderly pastor I knew in Illinois, that she had been under 13 years ago. She had been accused of dressing inappropriately by a member of the church and he had withheld sending a recommendation to a bible college in Oregon. She had left the church angry and went into rebellion.

Howbeit a friend of mine in the PAW and Chicago got the same read off of it, that the college had been in trouble and God was protecting her…and she took it as an affront, not God’s grace. I discussed this with the pastor months later and he revealed there had been false doctrine and immorality in that college before its charter was revoked. (This is why I have a different take on many matters in the church today…to the chagrin of many of my friends and the humor of other! Oh the doors God has opened for me in the past due to the bitter wounding of a foe that wrought some good in my life. What man means for evil, God always means for good as you will see.)

My wife had a miscarriage a few weeks after coming to the new church. She had another a few weeks after our second meeting with the new pastor. (Not bitter about it. God has unusual ways of protecting us. Look at Joseph.) Several times she blew up at me at home, screaming at me even in front of her son the last 30-40 days before she finally left. I found out about an apparent infidelity against me, and she revealed another one she committed against her ex-husband, even after denying having ever committed such actions when we were going through marriage counseling with her pastor in Ohio.

Whether her actions were from emotional pain from the miscarriages, or those of someone who did not want her past revealed, she grew increasingly more confrontational and left following the Sunday morning service June 14, 2009…right after our pastor preached on how he would feel if his wife were to leave him. She fidgeted all through the morning sermon as he described how devastated he would be.

June 28, 2009, just 2 weeks after my wife took off, I called an evangelist, Bro. Freddy Clark, a well known minister in the Apostolic movement for his Gifts of the Spirit Seminars and tent meeting healing and miracle campaigns. He had helped me out several times in the past and he always gave me a solid word from God, that always came to pass, even though it was not always what I wanted to hear. I told him about my problems and he stopped me and began to prophesy in the name of the Lord over me:

“Start over and do not worry about your wife, she is a broken tooth and a foot out of joint and even if you restore the marriage she will only leave you again and you will go through all the hell and heartache all over again. Today is a new day for you, a new beginning. Start over. Mark this day on your calendar. Stop banging your head against closed doors that will not open. Walk softly before the Lord and walk through the small doors, and behind the small doors there will always be a larger door. Go through those too. The UPCI will not accept you because prophets and politicians do not mix…this is because prophets get their authority from God and politicians get their authority from the people…and the people do not know God.”

“They will respect you at a distance, but will not associate closely with you, because when you walk into their churches the skeletons fall out of the closet. They will come to you for help and counsel when in trouble, but will avoid you publically, but do not be offended, because it is not you they fear, but it is the anointing that they are afraid of. Instead of focusing your ministry toward one organization, focus it at the Apostolic movement as a whole, because we need you. Do not accept any office or position from them. If you do, they will control you, and you don't need that. You have to be free to say what God gives you to say.”

“You are running out of churches to send your new converts and the people you win to God, because there are many ministers in the area who have left the doctrines and truths. Eventually you will begin to pastor the people you win to God directly from your home and they will flood to your home to be ministered to. Walk with God just like you did in your yesterdays. Do you understand this prophesy that is spoken over you?” (He was talking about years past.)

(My wife had a vision of this very same prophesy before she had her first miscarriage. My home appraiser, a Spirit-filled woman from a non-denominational church stopped by in July and prophesied the same thing to me after we prayed in the Spirit for several minutes after my home inspection. Yes, odd things happen at my home.) ;) This mighty man of God talked to me for nearly an hour, and told me prophesies over the Apostolic movement and the UPC. He’s well up in years now and I asked him who was going to take his place when he was gone. I didn’t like the answer.

The following week at church I told my pastor (who knows this evangelist just like all my former pastors do) about the prophesy…or at least part of it…the part about my wife…but nothing about the words spoken over me about my calling, because of his comments in the office months before. I laughed as his eyes lit up and he wanted to know what the prophet had spoken over me. I merely thought it odd that a man who openly doubted my calling would want to know about what an elderly prophet said about that calling! That time will come…just not today.

Several other prophesies were made known to me while I was going through this mess. My friend, Joe, a PAW preacher in Chicago told me God spoke to him and told him that he was going to take me to a new dimension and level of power in my ministry when I come through this storm. A mutual friend of ours, Tony, a young man in North Carolina that we’ve both known a long time called me a week later and told me he saw a vision of me walking into a spiritual hurricane that was tremendous, but that I was now walking through it alone, Jesus Christ was walking right in the hurricane with me! A week later there was a tongues message at church that said, “I’ve seen your hurt and your pain and I am going to walk with you through this storm closer than I have ever walked with you before.”

Sadly I’ve friends I grew up on Pentecostal pews with and went to camp with every year that have been through struggles like mine on a much smaller scale, who say they have never had God show up like he has in my life. I asked them, but did you ask him to show up, shine forth and show off for HIS glory? Inevitably, they all said, “No.”

I was finishing up a 40 day fast at Ohio Camp meeting, July 31, 2009, (the anniversary of the day I’d proposed to my wife the year before at that same camp meeting), a sheriff’s patrol car pulled up at the Millersport Ohio Campgrounds and a deputy headed for the office building where a closed-door ministers’ meeting was being held. I was outside talking to several friends of mine from the area churches and was quickened that he was there for me, not some noise issue. I said as much to my friends and seconds later my name was called over the public address system to come to the office. I walked in and all the district officials turned to look as my wife’s pastor, another minister and the deputy took me aside into another office and presented a DVRO against me from my wife!

I told them then that I’d faced at least 3 or 4 of these in the past in North Carolina and Florida and that the God who had delivered me from all of them would deliver me from this one as well. Both ministers stood there with their mouths hanging open. It’s fun to read things like that in some book from the Pentecostal Publishing House. I guess it’s not as much fun when you are seeing it happen right in front of your eyes!

Her pastor stayed after and told me he had heard about her plans the night before and confronted her and her parents on the phone, telling her she was living in a dream world and that I had never done her any harm, and the only reason she was doing this was to embarrass me in front of the church and ministry. While he was talking, so was another voice I knew well…telling me that although this pastor had said one thing to me, like any good politician, he would say the opposite to her…and that he was not going to correct the sin at hand. There was too much money and trouble involved. I asked him to judge the matter and to keep justice and judgment.

When I returned home, I told my pastor about what happened as I was leaving service and met him in the altar, and he looked at me and said, “You’ve been through this before, haven’t you?” I replied “the exact same thing!”

I contacted Bro. Doug Klinedinst via email about my situation and he gave me a Word as well, telling me that he was strongly impressed of the Lord that her true colors would come out in court and not to worry about it. He was spot - with that one!

Exactly one week later I returned to Ohio for court and the pastor there refused to present himself to testify and set the matter right before the courts. My parents drove in from Missouri to testify if need be, but never had to. When they pulled up to the courthouse, my father said the same thing to me that God had spoken to me in Millersport. Dad told me outside the courthouse, “Son, the spirit of the ministry in this town will not correct sin. He will not take a stand. Don’t expect any help from him.”

(Note: Yes, I know that Ohio courts, especially a local magistrate, have no jurisdiction over anything that happened in Virginia...but I have nothing to hide and wanted to clear the air in whatever venue was available...besides the judgment God was performing was against a ministry in Ohio, not Virginia for those that have an ear to hear....) The local magistrate gave me free reign to cross examine all testimony and block any testimony from any witnesses not present to be cross-examined. That infuriated my wife.

Given my recent history I was comfortable in a court setting, having acted pro se many times in the past, and the magistrate took notice of my questions and the answers given and began to ask very pointed questions of her own...a few short moments later she asked bluntly about the abuse allegations made against me...and my estranged wife told her affirmatively, “He’s never put a hand on me ever!” Raised eyebrows from the female judge….

The judge immediately dismissed the case when my wife admitted she was using the allegations under false pretense to keep me from trying to reconcile our marriage. My wife stormed off out of the courtroom in a fit of absolute rage. My parents saw her come out…dad later described her as being angry as a wet hen and said he knew when he saw her face she had lost. It’s amazing what a desire to control will push a person to try. (LIKE PEOPLE, LIKE PRIEST!)

The following Monday, as expected, when notified about her actions and the admissions, her pastor chose to do nothing, despite her father also making the same allegations to both my pastor and her pastor in an email a few weeks before. I emailed them an electronic PDF of the court’s dismissal document the following Monday letting them know that my father-in-law and spouse didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to tell them the truth and give them the paperwork their selves.

The following month in September 2009, I again asked her pastor in Ohio to bring judgment before the church on three of his church members for violating the Word, filing false allegations and committing fraud and perjury. I presented my case to him and instead of getting any sort of understanding or reasonable action from him, he turned on me, declaring his "elders" instructed him that as the matter was "done in private to leave it in private."

However, this was not the case...it had been done publically...and he knew this, as the main perpetrator in the actions mentioned, my estranged wife, had served me court paperwork right in front of the Ohio District Board while they sat at a closed-door ministers' meeting last year at the Ohio Camp meeting just two months prior.

Somehow I don’t think the Apostle Paul put that caveat on the believers. The Word even says those things done in private will be revealed publically. We’ve just got too many politicians among us that bear no allegiance whatsoever to following the word of God. They serve a God who suggests, but never commands…You know, the peaceful, loving, Hippy-Jesus, who turns no one away, and desperately accepts anyone regardless of their actions because he doesn’t have a choice. Not hardly!

I reminded her pastor of the prophecy about God overturning her allegations after the hearing. It didn’t faze him in the slightest. He’d already made up his mind to avoid the situation entirely.

After several attempts of discussing the matter with him, he grew extremely agitated as I gave scripture after scripture supporting bringing the matter to the church. He kept bringing up my "past failures" from a year before , or what he perceived was my failures (he knew nothing of the full situation), and said that he would get back with me in one week and let me know whether he would bring the matter before the church for judgment. I went to prayer because I knew exactly what he was going to do, sadly enough. It was going to be a long week….

(Pardon the following lengthy scriptural passage, but it is needful.)

Jeremiah 23

[1] Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.
[2] Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD.
[3] And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase.
[4] And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the LORD.
[5] Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.
[6] In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.
[7] Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that they shall no more say, The LORD liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt;
[8] But, The LORD liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land.
[9] Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome, because of the LORD, and because of the words of his holiness.
[10] For the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourneth; the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil, and their force is not right.
[11] For both prophet and priest are profane; yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the LORD.
[12] Wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in the darkness: they shall be driven on, and fall therein: for I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation, saith the LORD.
[13] And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria; they prophesied in Baal, and caused my people Israel to err.
[14] I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.

[15] Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts concerning the prophets; Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall: for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land.
[16] Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD.
[17] They say still unto them that despise me, The LORD hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you.
[18] For who hath stood in the counsel of the LORD, and hath perceived and heard his word? who hath marked his word, and heard it?
[19] Behold, a whirlwind of the LORD is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind: it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked.
[20] The anger of the LORD shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly.
[21] I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied.
[22] But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings.
[23] Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD, and not a God afar off?
[24] Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD.
[25] I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed.
[26] How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart;
[27] Which think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal.
[28] The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the LORD.
[29] Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?
[30] Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the LORD, that steal my words every one from his neighbour.
[31] Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the LORD, that use their tongues, and say, He saith.
[32] Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the LORD, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their lightness; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them: therefore they shall not profit this people at all, saith the LORD.
[33] And when this people, or the prophet, or a priest, shall ask thee, saying, What is the burden of the LORD? thou shalt then say unto them, What burden? I will even forsake you, saith the LORD.
[34] And as for the prophet, and the priest, and the people, that shall say, The burden of the LORD, I will even punish that man and his house.
[35] Thus shall ye say every one to his neighbour, and every one to his brother, What hath the LORD answered? and, What hath the LORD spoken?
[36] And the burden of the LORD shall ye mention no more: for every man's word shall be his burden; for ye have perverted the words of the living God, of the LORD of hosts our God.
[37] Thus shalt thou say to the prophet, What hath the LORD answered thee? and, What hath the LORD spoken?
[38] But since ye say, The burden of the LORD; therefore thus saith the LORD; Because ye say this word, The burden of the LORD, and I have sent unto you, saying, Ye shall not say, The burden of the LORD;
[39] Therefore, behold, I, even I, will utterly forget you, and I will forsake you, and the city that I gave you and your fathers, and cast you out of my presence:
[40] And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten.

On September 8th, 2009 at 2pm, the day before her pastor was to call me back I felt something fall like a deluge in the Spirit and knew that judgment had fallen. My simple prayer a week before was that when that minister determined in his heart that he would not judge the matter according to the Word of God that the judgment of God would fall on him before it even came out of his mouth to tell me he would not do so. I immediately contacted my pastor to let him know what had happened.

To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice. Proverbs 21:3

Days went by...but no phone calls. Finally on the weekend I tried to call, getting only voicemail...this continued for weeks on end. Finally one day he answered and his voice was icy as he told me what "his elders" told him to do, and I let him know what I felt God had given me to say to him. He grew angrier by the minute and when I told him that the next year in his church was going to be hell on earth for him, he hung up in a rage.

A prophetess in his church warned me that he would react that way as he was not going to punish a large tither in "his" congregation. Money is not the root of all evil, but the love of money is the root of all evil. I realize it must be difficult to even think about bringing judgment on someone in a church when the family in question is a large donation source. Don't count on them for much longer though, Hireling, the IRS is breathing down their necks and will catch up with them shortly. I put two and two together when I saw the notices come in the mail last time I was there in their home. My wife tried to cover them up quickly, but I saw them. A shepherd can't give safe passage to a wolf...feed him all you want...when he's hungry or you are down, he will turn on you and devour you.

While we are on the subject, there is a difference between a shepherd and a hireling...remember that when the ones you thought you were "protecting" turn on you like wild animals! Also do not mistake licensing with an organization or marriage into the family of a prophet as a call of God on your life...I recognized that quickly enough while sitting in your services, Hireling!

When a visiting minister has to warn you that one of your saints is giving false tongues and interpretations and prophecies tearing down the preached Word just delivered by your assistant pastor only minutes before...and you are blind to the fact....the reason rests in your anointing or lack thereof. Enough said. I believe this needs no explanation. You'll hear about it at camp meeting this summer. Are you so starved for the operation of the Spirit in your life that you would let a spirit of Ashtoreth operate in your church? Just curious.

On that note, I wish our bible colleges would stop calling men to preach and let God do his own work!

But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. John 10:12-13

By their fruits ye shall know them...right? Get ready. I might have sat silently like a sheared sheep these 9 months, but someone else hasn't. Get ready for a wake-up call. I just hope your actions do not bring a stop to revival in Ohio like the principal characters in Acts chapter 5 did! In their case, it was their death that brought fear of God onto the church and miracles followed.

If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they. Ecclesiastes 5:8

For several months now I’ve been beaten to a pulp emotionally, mentally and spiritually, all the while being pushed aside to see if I’ll just die or go away of my own free will. Unfortunately for those in the know, God is not constrained by our weaknesses, failures, disqualifications or other criteria we lack. We are nothing without Him as he has shown me so often of recent.

By January 2010 I had come to the end of my rope and was going to pack up and leave the local assembly and try and find an assembly close by that didn’t require an hour drive to church. I was weary, beaten down...I was done. Still I went one last time. I walked in right after the choir finished singing on a Sunday morning.

Late? Yes, get over it. God is always right on time.

The associate pastor preached and I felt the Spirit move to speak in the vocal gifts (that’s a change in this place) …but he would not shut up. He just kept rambling on in the pulpit.

I felt it again and a sister sitting down on the lower floor waited for a pause and then began to give a tongues message…but the minister in the pulpit continued to speak over her, either not hearing her, or unaccustomed to the operation of the gifts, or God forbid deliberately trying to talk over her! I've seen a little bit of everything in Pentecost.

In my usual candor, I prayed again, “God I feel you want to speak to me... you please shut him up.” Instantly he began to cough and wheeze in the pulpit and the sister gave the tongues message once again and before he could get his breath a brother on the lower left of the sanctuary, below the balcony, bellowed out like a bull with the interpretation.

“Do not leave me. Do not go. Do not walk out. I am not finished with you here yet.”

The pastor stepped up and grabbed the microphone to rescue the speaker that morning and said God wanted us to come to the altar and that he was speaking to "everybody." He said that not a pew should be full that God was speaking to all of us to come to the altar.

Liar.

Look, I know that works for some people, but why do we always do that in Pentecost? If God is speaking to one man or woman, let him. Don’t tell every other person in the building that God is talking to them…you will confuse them if He isn’t talking to them. No wonder we have so many confused people in Pentecost!

Let God talk to those of us rocks that he needs to speak to bluntly and be done with it…without bloodying the waters, or worse, making what passes for "Apostolic" ministry in this generation look like spiritual morons and buffoons in front of the entire congregation…as in this instance.

(Sorry, I did it again!) Yes, I closed my eyes, bowed my head and prayed again…(forgive the candor).

“God, why is it in Pentecost when you speak we try to say God is speaking to the entire church? If you are talking to this entire assembly, then so be it, but if you are speaking directly to me alone, please confirm your word so there is no mistake here. I need to know.”

And God in his typical candor did it again. You guessed it…the same brother who gave the interpretation to the original tongues message bellowed out on the tail of the pastor’s words and said:

“I’m speaking directly to you. You asked me to do so. What more do you want me to do?”

I love it when God has a sense of humor. It doesn’t matter who he calls a liar…as long as he speaks. Yes, I guess I’m here for a little longer. I’m not done here until everyone gets their parting shots in I guess. Let the beatings continue! It doesn’t lessen the pain of the wounds, but the replies from above are very therapeutic!

(Final editorial note: In less than 4 months I am being moved to another state. A pastor there has asked me to come visit his church. Before I leave this article is going to the district superintendants of three districts and the pastors and evangelists involved. This is for the knowledge of those bishops only. I am NOT asking for judgment. There is a reason why I did not turn this over to you and I will explain.

If I left this at the pastoral level and those men continued to sin and do nothing to correct that sin, the death of their ministries and their churches fell on their heads LOCALLY. If I had turned it over to the presbytery level or district level and you had done nothing, then it would have killed the revivals in your entire districts and great men, Godly men, would have had their revivals stifled through now fault of their own...because as you taught me for years, everything rises and falls on leadership. Spiritual leadership, not physical leadership. It does not follow the card system you carry in your pockets. Sorry.

I contacted my current pastor 4 months ago via email and asked him who was responsible for the death of a man who was shoved into a tank full of sharks...the man who pushed him only...or the three men standing by watching with life preservers and ropes in their hands with the ability to pull him out, but who would not do so. He did not respond to my email...then told me he didn't get it in an email, so I sent it again. He got it and again did not respond.

I have sat here for 2 years...one year since that tongues message, waiting to die spiritually...held under water until I drown. I was going to pack it in and leave, but as you well know, I was directed to stay, and to die, because I prayed and asked God to tie my situation to your new building campaign which the Holy Ghost brought to a screeching stop from the very month I walked into your congregation 2 years ago. The economy had nothing to do with it, sir.

My reasons for not bringing it before you in judgment and suffering the loss is this, secondly because of the prophecy by the prophet to let her go and start over, but primarily (only naming a few names that I know) because great men of God like Apostle Aaron Bounds, in Zainesville, Ohio, or the bishops of Ohio, Virginia or Maryland would have lost great revivals not only in their cities, but throughout their entire states if I had done so and corrective action was pushed aside for the politics of "the card."

I did not do you any favors by doing this though...and I was merely trying to keep better men from being wronged. Sometimes you have to take and suffer a great loss to protect the bride. I have been mandated to do nothing, but simply to stand by and see the judgment of God fall after I leave this district, much as it did in Florida before I left there 6 years ago under similar circumstances. You said you did not believe that my calling was what I thought it was. I knew it had been confirmed long before I met you and was reaffirmed by the prophet within months of you saying this. I do not know if he will simply chastise you, remove you from your office, or let your entire works crumble, but I fear it will be greater than that. I am truly sorry. I did not come here for this. But according to what he told me and was spoken in prophecy over me, it is what I was mandated to stay here for. If I had my say, I'd have left months after arriving here. However, some of us do not have that privilege. At any rate, you have what you desired, my spiritual death, pastor. I hope and pray this is what you and the three ministers you spoke to in private desired...because I don't think you are going to like God's response.

I've taken a posture and stance for two years now that leaves me as no threat to you. I am not licensed with you. The prophet told me to never accept a position from you or and office, and I will not. He told me that I had to be free to speak what God gave me and that no man in this organization will associate me because of the calling that is on me. He did however promise me that I no longer have to stand in your pulpits as I did in years gone by, but from now on all I have to do is walk into your assemblies an everything will be revealed. He prophesied that nothing will ever be able to be hidden from me from now on when I walk into Apostolic churches.

Write me off as dead among you. I seek neither your sympathy, actions, reactions or judgment. I will however, rise again and start over and rebuild what David, William, Sam and you decided to strip from me. I am sorry for the lack of titles and sir names. They won't mean much to you anyway. As Jesus Christ said, beware that no man steal your crown. In this case you robbed yourselves. Every work the three of you have done since the time you chose behind closed doors and over the phone to work this work has been sealed in judgment and will burn up in the last and final judgment.

This is the beginning of the end of UPCI backdoor politics as you know it. Other oneness organizations have other issues. This one can be considered dealt with and not at my hands. The blood of the prophets is on the hands of the United Pentecostal Church.)

Remember Melita

2009-12-18T08:16:00.000-08:00

Now when much time was spent, and when sailing was now dangerous, because the fast was now already past, Paul admonished them, And said unto them, Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of our lives. Nevertheless the centurion believed the master and the owner of the ship, more than those things which were spoken by Paul. And because the haven was not commodious to winter in, the more part advised to depart thence also, if by any means they might attain to Phenice, and there to winter; which is an haven of Crete, and lieth toward the south west and north west. And when the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, loosing thence, they sailed close by Crete. But not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon. And when the ship was caught, and could not bear up into the wind, we let her drive. Acts 27:9-15

I remember during my time in the Marine Corps a brief trip made to the USS Tortuga, a small amphibious landing ship that was new at the time and had not even made her maiden voyage or her shakedown cruise with a Marine unit aboard her yet. It was just after the Persian Gulf War and I was a communicator who had been reassigned to work for the unit chaplain as his assistant.

We had packed our gear aboard ship and tied everything down, which sailors who served on her told me was a requirement, although the seas were calm that afternoon, just off the North Carolina coastline. We went underway, sailing down the coast only a short distance, but along about the time of sunset, the word came over the 1MC (loudspeaker) stating that there was a strong gale blowing in and ordering the sailors to tie down all loose gear and equipment. The reason, I found out later, is that a folding chair not fastened down HURTS when it comes sliding at you at you from across a compartment at high velocity. Still, as all our equipment was stowed and tied, I did not think anything of it until we tried to hold a Bible study a few hours later up in the control tower of the ship.

Now anyone who has ever served on an ocean-going vessel knows that there are places to go if you are prone to sea-sickness that are easier on the stomach than others…three levels up in the ships control tower is not that place! The reason being is that the ship’s center of gravity is generally below the waterline; otherwise she would be top-heavy and tip over.

That being said, any rocking that the ship does in a storm is magnified the further you get above the waterline. Our 2100 study was pretty much canceled as we were literally thrown from one side of the room to the other, with the ship rocking so much that you could nearly walk on the walls as the vessel tipped and rolled in the heavy seas from side to side and backwards and forwards. It was no picnic in the berthing areas of the ship that night either as Marines and sailors were thrown out of their racks (beds) by the wildly rocking ship and some lost their sea-legs and began to toss their evening dinner on the deck.

That being said, I can say from experience that sailing the oceans, especially in a storm, is not for the faint of heart. With that, I bring you to the island of Melita.

Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, known for his many missionary journeys in the Bible would scarcely be considered a push-over by modern day church standards. Most of our Apostolic churches would not even let him in the door. I seriously believe that with all my heart. There was a boldness and tenacity about the man that slew Christians, fed them to lions, watched the stoning of Stephen and then after being knocked down by Christ on the road to Damascus and brought into the faith…that belies anything modern Christianity, even oneness Pentecostalism has produced of late. Compared to what he endured, we just don’t have the goods…but give us time….

As in the church today, Paul found those even in the position of leadership that would not listen to him and chose the words of other men over those he gave. Face it brethren, it happens. We’ve become a movement of politicians, not ministers. Our mission now is not to keep the faith once delivered to the saints, but to keep the “peace” and not let anyone rock our boat. Only in recent years have I heard a baptism of integrity slipping into our movement in the form of honesty among some of our elders admitting that they had licensed men to the ministry that have never been called by God. There seems to be a baptism of revelation and honesty that is flowing into our older generation as they step off the scene, that is willing to admit that we are not invincible and that position and an office does not make us right in God’s eyes, only obedience to God’s word.

I liken the master and owner of the ship to what we in the Marines called “subject matter experts.” This person did not have to be of any specific rank or status. He or she just needed to be a specialist and a professional in their field of study or work. He knew what it was like out on the deep. Nothing there intimidated him. He had a business to run, money to make and a ship to sail…and ships were built to survive the storm, not avoid them. Let that sink in for a bit.

Paul was not running from God. He was no Jonah. Yet even though Paul had given the centurion counsel not to set sail, there were conditions about him in the natural…his chains, thing said about him, his accusations…and things of life, his situation…that caused the centurion to lightly esteem his advice. In short, Paul was bound hand and foot in chains, a prisoner and sentenced to appear before Caesar because of his petition to Felix and King Agrippa.

Don’t try being in that cat’s shoes in modern Pentecost! Sorry, someone sees you bound; shackled, accused…they will run you under the gauntlet of accusation and strip you of your dignity, your standing in the community and your honor. Some will even try to strip you of your spiritual authority, based on nothing more than an accusation…. Why? Because evil is always accepted at face value and the good has to be proven…because we are fallen flesh. You know what I’m talking about. Be honest. You don’t have to sin to have people in Pentecost slander you and dis-fellowship you. All you need is an accusation on your hide and the good old ain’ts will swarm like a school of piranhas and strip you to the bone!

The centurion should have known better than to not listen to Paul, but he was a victim of flesh. He wanted the specialist’s advice and he got it and followed it. I’m sure he had been with Paul for a long time, and unlike some of us, Paul didn’t clam up and shut his mouth about the gospel so he wouldn’t offend someone. I’m sure that centurion had heard Paul’s testimony over and over and had seen people converted and healed and saved. Paul didn’t do anything in hiding. He told Agrippa that the things that happened in the kingdom were not done in a corner. He’d been thrown out of the temple, out of synagogues (sorry that spells churches in this day and age), stoned, beaten, slapped in the face by the biggest named preachers in the entire land (I know…taboo subject in Pentecost), run out of town. You get those kind of credentials in this generation and you have committed spiritual suicide in most of our social circles! The charismatics might put you in their pulpits, but not us One God people!

Don’t worry…I’m getting closer to hitting you where you live. Read on.

And running under a certain island which is called Clauda, we had much work to come by the boat: Which when they had taken up, they used helps, undergirding the ship; and, fearing lest they should fall into the quicksands, strake sail, and so were driven. And we being exceedingly tossed with a tempest, the next day they lightened the ship; And the third day we cast out with our own hands the tackling of the ship. And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away. But after long abstinence Paul stood forth in the midst of them, and said, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed from Crete, and to have gained this harm and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, Saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Caesar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me. Howbeit we must be cast upon a certain island. Acts 27:16-26

Yes, the head man in charge should have listened, but he didn’t. However, Paul did not hold it against him, because the word of the Lord came to him again and he moved on INTO his storm, gave more advice, gave more warning and this time they listened…for awhile. That spells “we ain’t out of the woods yet,” to those of you who constantly want out of your storms. Sorry, but I gave up that mindset three years ago, friend. When I get in my storm, I push, I rock the boat, I test the waters. I try and see what I can get done. I pray. I fast…just like Paul did. I keep talking to the man who thinks he’s in charge and to the One who is! I don’t sit idle on my hands and that drives some saints and preachers alike slap nuts, because when they are wanting you to resign yourself to your “fate” (in their eyes) no one wants to see someone taking readings, checking the wind, seeing who else is willing to hoist sails, take the wheel, bail water. Our mindset is “curse God and die, you fool!” Shut up and stop bugging me. I have peanut brittle to sell and a sermon to prepare for and I don’t have time for you in your storm! Notice what they did…WE LET HER DRIVE. For those of you not familiar with the terminology, they turned the ship not AGAINST the storm where they would meet the most resistance, but they turned INTO the storm and let the strong winds fill their sails and drive them into a PRE-DETERMINED DIRECTION. That might not make sense to you yet, but hang on. The boat’s coming around.

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep. Psalms 107:23-24

This verse brought new meaning into my life exactly five years ago this month. One of the greatest storms in my life, up until that time, had blown into my life. I had been out of church for nearly 10 years, running from God’s call on my life. God sought me out like the lost sheep and carried me back out of my desert place and restored me. In less than a year, I had married, gotten out of the Marines and headed to another state where there was a minister who believed in full restoration of fallen ministers. Some say that is everyone among us, but let’s be honest…that simply isn’t true. We put conditions on God and we put conditions on His callings, and “the called” that we have absolutely no say or control over.

During that storm I was faced with a myriad of conditions that absolutely made no sense to me. There was no explanation for my situation, only revelation in my situation. My wife, my best friend turned on me. A mentor and pastor that I highly respect turned on me. I lost my home. It cost me a very lucrative job. I was arrested, charged falsely with a felony, run out of church. (That was a first for me at that time, but not a last.) I was slandered, ridiculed by saints, sinners and ministry alike, called a “vessel unto dishonor” (a false doctrine), called a reprobate because I couldn’t cry on cue during a counseling session that was more screaming and berating than giving of counsel, and a man I sought counsel from repeatedly told other ministers that I “operated with a familiar spirit,” because God read his mail too many times while talking to me. Still, like Paul, you don’t hold their actions, be it via arrogance or ignorance, against them. You move on and get another word from God. That’s the only way you stay relevant and productive.

Sometimes you don’t have any choice about what skeletons God kicks out of the closet when you walk into a church, or an office, or a home. As I was advised recently…don’t take it personal. They will not accept you. Focus on the movement and not the organizations in the movement. They will respect you at a distance but they will not associate with you. They will counsel with you in private, but will not fellowship with you closely in public, because prophets and politicians do not mix. One gets his authority from God…the other from the people and the people do not know God.

For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end. Psalms 107:25-27

God calls for the storms of our life. He may allow the enemy to use your storm to attempt to distract you, sway you, turn you, trouble you, try you and test you…but He will NEVER allow your storm to destroy you. Whether God brings the storm to you for direction, correction, or protection, God called for your storm. Set that in your mind from the start. Situation did not bring your storm, no matter how many idiots tell you they did. The situation may have been a catalyst used by the Almighty to get you into a position to enter the storm, but men do not rule in the affairs of their life. You might have your hand on the rudder, but God has the wind in his fist, friend. If God calls for your storm, nothing will bring you out of that storm, but God!

Nothing will bring impurities out of your spirit like a good storm, a good old fashion class 4 gale, friend! Don’t fight it with a spiritual Dramamine patch and seek preachers and saints who only agree with you to give you advice. Hit your knees in prayer and fasting and let God empty you out. Just lean over the side of your situation and throw up all the junk in your life, heart and spirit that are making you spiritually sick. Like a refiners fire, let it burn out of you all the impurities, the cares of life, the fears, the inadequacies, confidence in others that don’t desire to walk as closely to God as you desire to, especially those who don’t esteem you as an equal. Puke up the loneliness, the bitterness, the spiritual political correctness of Pentecost, the fear of rejection, the consideration for some carnal slob’s thoughts on your situation…just get rid of it!

I learned hard way that I can go to seven different saints, nine sinners and fifteen different preachers for advice in my storm, and all I will get is thirty carnal fleshly answers of varying opinions and hopefully one word from God…then I confuse myself worse because I then have to try and figure out who’s lying, who’s guessing and who’s telling the truth! Better hope it was the man of God in your life! If not, there is more at stake than just your storm…there’s a church and a ministry being judged! I hope the engine of your prayer life has a Delco battery attached to it, because you are headed for one long, cold, hardspiritual winter!

[28] Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses.
[29] He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.
[30] Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.
[31] Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!
[32] Let them exalt him also in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders.
[33] He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground;
[34] A fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.
[35] He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings.
[36] And there he maketh the hungry to dwell, that they may prepare a city for habitation;
[37] And sow the fields, and plant vineyards, which may yield fruits of increase.
[38] He blesseth them also, so that they are multiplied greatly; and suffereth not their cattle to decrease.
[39] Again, they are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow.
[40] He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, where there is no way.
[41] Yet setteth he the poor on high from affliction, and maketh him families like a flock.
[42] The righteous shall see it, and rejoice: and all iniquity shall stop her mouth.
[43] Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the LORD. Psalms 107:23-43

Spiritual Suicide: Refusing To Keep Justice And Judgment In The Apostolic Church!

2009-11-24T09:39:00.000-08:00

I'm riding out a tragic storm in my life. Please keep me in prayer. Always looking for friends to talk to, but for now that is all. I married a girl from Circleville, Ohio, a year ago, but she took off in June and destroyed our marriage and home. She will not listen to our pastors and sit down and talk.

In less than 9 months she went from being on fire to being in total rebellion against all our pastors and the Word of God. She wanted me to toss out my stand on a lot of modesty and separation issues in her final email to me. Stay away from anyone who wants you to water down your doctrine or holiness and modesty standards! God gave them to you for a reason Oneness Apostolics!

Never let go of what God gave you. Keep the old landmarks! They are there for a reason.

In this situation, it could be postpartum depression from two back to back miscarriages (per me), or a seed of rebellion not dealt with years ago (per her pastor), but beware of anyone that beats you down emotionally and critiques and tears on your walk with God, never prays through...then tries to exalt themselves as better than you if you fail or raise your voice after weeks of ridicule, verbal abuse and degradation. I'm now dealing with someone that not only does not care if they lie, steal and press false charges, and bear false witness, but will not listen to the ministry or conduct their selves (family included) like Apostolic Pentecostals. (God delivered me from all their actions and it was prophesied I would step into a more powerful level with my walk with God after my storm.)

Birds of a feather flock together, Apostolics. Like people, like priest. As is the mother, so is the daughter!

I just found out that if my wife had filed here in VA she could have been divorced by Christmas. Since she took off back to Ohio she can't file until December and must wait until June for it to be final. She's not an Ohio resident yet and is no longer a VA resident! God has a sense of humor, people!

Isn't it funny how people backslide and go off on their own tangents to violate the Word of God and get their selves all screwed up so bad they can't do anything right! They can't even get backsliding "right"...if there is such a thing!

Kind of like her pastor who refused to judge sin in their local assembly and put an end to people's sin simply because they were tithe-payers in his local assembly and I live out of state. In this case he knew about her rebellion for 6 years and refused to correct her and her family and God dropped it right back in his lap. Ultimately the courts stepped in and put an end to her fraud, perjury and slander...and a pastor ended up losing the favor of God off an entire congregation and ministry. I wrote him and told him that their lies and perjury could have cost me my clearance, job, career, my home and the ability to support my family and he would do nothing about it, even though the courts had already ruled she had lied and had no grounds and even admitted under oath to only filing her allegations to keep me from trying to reconcile the marriage. That's petty, vindictive, dirty and absurd!

It's sad when people ignore God's word and think they "dodged a bullet," by avoiding stirring up a stink in their church and instead by following flesh instead of God's Word they end up cutting off the Life's Blood of the Spirit that keeps their local assembly alive.

What could ever be worse than having God accept a minister's decision to disobey God's Word...and snuff out the candlestick of God's Spirit and allow that ministry and assembly to drift away into the eddy's of the current of life and be pushed into a brush pile and completely out of the ebb and flow of the river of the Spirit forever?

That's Spiritual Suicide!

I Will Restore

2009-07-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

(Originally published March 1, 2007)

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you। And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed। Joel 2:25-26

No matter how long I walk with God I will never cease to be amazed at the awesome clarity of His word, nor will I ever cease to be amazed at the greatest miracle of all—that God would talk to a man!

This past week was a turning point in my life and ministry. I have been through a long storm in my life for almost exactly three and a half years while I sought to build the ministry God called me to do, get direction in my life, and start bearing fruit. Raised in Apostolic Pentecostal circles, I received the Holy Ghost at a youth camp, which is not uncommon, yet at an early age I knew I had a calling on my life and that I did not fit in with the kids in my youth group. God dealt with me at an early age (as early as 11 years old) and I began to fast, pray, seek God’s face and be a witness. It was nothing for me at 13-years-old to have a group of adults cornered in a store, restaurant, market or park witnessing to them and sharing what God had done in my life.

I was the odd-ball, the fifth-wheel, sticking out like a sore thumb in my middle school, high school and even at youth functions with our church like a sore thumb. I didn’t talk like they did, act like they did, or dress like they did. Even with the church youth I was a sort of novelty. I wasn’t the one that got called for nights out, gatherings, van trips to rallies, youth conferences, etc.

As a young adult I went through low times, got to travel overseas and then here in the US as I moved through college and changed jobs, finally fitting into my niche in one church, helping the young men, many who had callings to the ministry. I have found over the years that it is an immutable law of God that you reproduce after your own kind! That’s a subject for another blog entirely, but it makes me feel sorry for all the people I ever won to God!

I’ve developed some very solid friendships on here, and made some awesome acquaintances. I’ve always had a burden for helping the hurting, the wounded, the broken, and this has spilled over into those times when working the altar that through the gift of the word or knowledge I was able to minister to people and bring them to a break-through or deliverance in the situations they were facing, or their individual walks with God.

I’d like to be able to say it was a cake-walk, but it was not. I’ve had hard times more than most, even to the parting of some friendships because of the latent misconceptions of many among us that feel that if you are constantly being bombarded by storms, turmoil, strife, trouble and walking through spiritual darkness, that something must be wrong with your walk with God, or you are backslidden or hiding sin. I lost my best friend a couple years ago over exactly that misconception!

I’ve learned that if you are going to be used of God in any great measure you have to be willing to more than just talk about it, dream about it or long for it. You must leave the shoreline behind, let go of the boat—and launch out into the deep! Some people are content to go all their lives just splashing around in the shallows or wading around in waters to their waist. Yet there are some among us that hear a cry out on the deep waters, a calling to launch out into supernatural waters to swim in. To those of you that have ever felt this call, this blog posting is affectionately dedicated to you.

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end. Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven. Psalms 107:23-30

Returning to my home church after a brief stint overseas in the US military, I was on fire for God, and beginning to operate in the gifts of the Spirit, helping young people in my home church who had never witnessed, prayed anyone through to the Holy Ghost or been used in the gifts to start to grow and function. My pastor urged me to go for licensing in the ministry and I did not do it, feeling I had not really paid my dues yet. I thought after several years I would regret that decision, but I have found that I do not, because I learned even more after that about several of our Apostolic organizations and the movement as a whole, and I didn’t need a piece of paper in my pocket to tell me whether I was a minister of God or not. I knew that from the time I was a child and was blowing my pastor and pastor’s wife’s minds at an early age.

I have worked with several Pentecostal movements in the past 25 years and some have the mistaken belief that if you do not carry a card with their organization you are not called of God. What nonsense. They will tell you this is not so, but go to one of their conferences, camps or seminars and see the walls go up. Those walls are getting ready to come down. …From the inside out I might add. Get ready.

I’ve been privileged to help several people on here since the creation of my new account and one in particular sticks in my mind because I feel so much of what they have gone through is very similar to my past in some areas, yet not all. She feels like an odd-ball too, a “strange bird” so to speak, sticking out in the hell and situations that were her life, yet desiring to be used of God to help in the healing, restoration and recovery of those who have been cast up on the beaches of life, broken, torn, cast aside and rejected. In this particular instance, God has given me a very peculiar insight like nothing I have ever seen. Even just this week, God gave me a word for her, and after ministering this to her, the very next day my pastor spoke a word of prophecy for her during a conversation while I was driving with him and talking about the situation.

I followed up on that conversation, telling her about what God had given me, trying to pour myself out in the anointing as much as she would allow. When helping hurting, wounded and bruised people, sometimes just touching their wound is enough to get them to withdraw from you and pull away. The only thing is that like any master surgeon, Jesus wants to lance the wound, get out the poison, infection and filth before gangrene or blood poisoning sets in and kills the wounded individual. God gave me a word of restoration for her and her home and marriage. I don’t know that she accepted it because I haven’t talked to her in several days, yet God impressed on me to give her Joel 2:25-26 (listed above) and to let her know that he was going to restore all the years that the enemy had destroyed out of her and her husband’s lives and use them mightily to do as I have tried to do in a weak way to help restore and preach deliverance to people, homes, families and young people. I feel God wants to take her and her husband into a dimension that far surpasses anything I have ever seen in the apostolic movement.

I felt in this particular situation that God had hidden his face from her for things both she and her husband had done and wrong choices they had made concerning forgiveness and resolving issues in their home, their marriage and their church, but that God was drawing her and her husband into a very powerful ministry, not only to help restore broken homes and marriages, fallen backsliders, wounded, hurting souls, and also to help restore fallen ministers. I feel that both she and husband have a prophetic calling on their lives, but that the devil had tricked them into a divorce because of the hardness of their hearts. I know God is dealing with both of them from what she told me so I will say no more until I start seeing God blow into their situation as spoken that he would.

I know from experience that God will not use a man or woman in any great measure in an area unless he has taken them through that situation intimately. God is going to restore their home and marriage and bring their scattered children home. She told me a little about their situation and it blew my mind the things God has brought them through and some of the situations God has placed them in during the past. I am awed by the power, sovereignty and divine will of our God! This woman and her husband have been THROUGH IT! I’m expecting to hear great things in their situation. It’s a lesson to me not to take out my frustrations on another person in my storms, because if it is in the divine will of God even your best friend will wound you and do stupid stuff that makes absolutely NO SENSE, not because they don’t care about you, but because God is going to find out how you will react and treat someone who wounds you WITHOUT CAUSE! It blew my mind when God told me that. Job, King David and Jesus himself knew all about that experience!

My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. Job 19:14
Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me. Psalms 41:9
Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast. And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him. Matt. 26:48-49

God turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends who talked bad about him even when he didn’t do anything wrong, but was enduring (unknowingly) the testing of a bet between the Almighty and the devil. David would not strike down Saul even when he was delivered into his hands, refusing to touch God’s anointed, even though he rebuked him for his actions. Jesus endured the death of the cross after being betrayed by one of his most trusted chosen group of disciples. I don’t think he stopped loving Judas. It wasn’t in his nature. Judas chose to withdraw from contact because of his betrayal, but Jesus never stopped loving him.

This weekend, after delivering my friend the word the Lord had placed on my heart for her, I went to church and my pastor came to the pulpit with a prepared message…but God smoothly lifted it from him and poured everything I had received last week into his mouth over the pulpit, down to the very scripture passages God had given me for my friend. He even announced that God had spoken to him and changed his message with an anointed word of prophecy concerning restoration. He told me that the prophecy was also for me after the service that God was going to bring me through the end of my storm and that the day was dawning, just as I had prophesied to my friend the day before. He told us that God keeps good records and that we will be repaid for all our suffering, that he is a God of balance. God is so awesome!

I realized then that the grace and mercy of our God is so powerful. He will not only send a man or woman to minister a word of restoration to a hurting soul, but also minister restoration to that messenger and the church at the same time. God knows how to fill vessels with the over-flow!

My word to many on this blog is to not let bitterness or unforgiveness over situations God orchestrates or brings into your life or the storms he calls for to create character in you rob you of the divine will of God in your life. Don’t let the enemy trick you into using human reasoning to miss the divine intent God has in calling for the storm in your life and for God’s sake don’t blame your brother, sister, spouse or pastor! If God called for the storm, GET OVER IT. You are going to go through it no matter what you do, it is called for on God’s divine time-clock and calendar. I will tell you something now, you can kick, fuss and cuss, bang your head into walls, scream at your friends, pastor and your spouse, but God wants you to build CHARACTER, more than he wants to answer the WHY-questions in your storm. You know what I mean. Why did this happen? Why did they do this? I thought they loved me, WHY did they do that? Why did God let this happen? Why me? The answer is always found in God’s word.

Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! For he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness. Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron; Because they rebelled against the words of God, and contemned the counsel of the most High: Therefore he brought down their heart with labour; they fell down, and there was none to help. Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder. Psalms 107:8-14

I didn’t have anyone come help me in my storm. I sometimes got a word from God in my Bible study and prayer time, or from my pastor, but the most devastating thing to me was having a God who talked to me intimately on a daily basis on many subjects go completely silent to me on things I desperately needed (or thought I needed) the answer to right then! I knew I was not in sin. Talk about frustrating! Then when I hit the mid-point of my storm and fell and God restored me like it was no big thing, then immediately returned to silence, I wanted to pull my hair out, until God showed me a verse in Acts 27 where Paul was caught up in the mighty storm Euroclydon. I learned to turn into my storm and let it drive!

And when the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, loosing thence, they sailed close by Crete. But not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon. And when the ship was caught, and could not bear up into the wind, we let her drive. And running under a certain island which is called Clauda, we had much work to come by the boat: Which when they had taken up, they used helps, undergirding the ship; and, fearing lest they should fall into the quicksands, strake sail, and so were driven. And we being exceedingly tossed with a tempest, the next day they lightened the ship; And the third day we cast out with our own hands the tackling of the ship. And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away. But after long abstinence Paul stood forth in the midst of them, and said, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed from Crete, and to have gained this harm and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, Saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Caesar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me. Acts 27:13-25

There comes a time in your storm that you don’t know which way to go. You can’t continue in the direction you want to go. During this time they lightened the load and got rid of a bunch of the junk on the ship they didn’t need, even some things they DID NEED during normal operating conditions. There is a time when you won’t know what to do but knowing the ship and how it operates (GET INTO THE BOOK!!!) you can just turn into the storm and LET IT DRIVE! Fast. Pray. Seek God’s face. Witness. Be a testimony. Work for God. Help the homeless, the hungry, the wounded. Do ALL THE THINGS YOU KNOW TO DO and do it with A VENGEANCE! Give God glory IN your storm!

He WILL bring you through it! God bless.

Restoring True Apostolic Governance: Servants, Leaders, or Lords Over God's Heritage?

2009-06-11T14:53:00.000-07:00

I offer my apologies to those who those who have been following my articles of late, for my delay in providing fresh feed for the flock. I will adjust.

I’m afraid my walk and calling are not the Pentecostal norm. However, for that, I make no apologies. For those who like milk, I’m not the writer to follow. Sorry, but since my restoration over 5 years ago, I have gone through hell on earth in my personal walk with God and the office of ministry God has called me to. I’ve been thrust into the flames of trial and testing and endured peril of false brethren and even peril of false ministries within a oneness Pentecostal organization that does not yet understand that they are fast approaching the judgment of God on their heresies, attitudes and lack of justice and judgment for anyone in the body of Christ that does not fall inside their clique of licensed ministers.

Sorry, but I am no Apostolic apologist, and I’m getting ready to handle it as roughly as I have to do so in order to get the job done. For those, my friends, my fellow laborers in Christ and fellow ministers in Apostolic truth and doctrine, please bear with me. I have no axe to grind, but I’ve delved into areas within an organization and cut into some issues that have festered in the Spirit to a point that it is time to lance the infection and let the poison out of a movement that has gone astray, or admit that a large Pentecostal organization, no matter how vastly renown and affluent, can and will be brought down to the ground if they fail to hear the voice of God and what the Spirit is saying to the church in this hour.

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. Rev. 3:20

I’ve long thought about the cry of the Holy Ghost in the book of Revelation, when after speaking to the angels of the seven churches and pleading with the angels of those churches to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church, that Jesus Christ himself just stepped back and said, Okay, if I can’t get the angels of the churches to hear me, then just let me find one man! IF ANY MAN WILL HEAR MY VOICE…How can a church age get so deaf to the cries of the Spirit of God that he would step past organizational hierarchies and governances and even the ears that should be hearing the voice of the Spirit and cry “IF ANY MAN WILL HEAR MY VOICE?” If I can just find one man that will listen to me, I can turn this thing around!

After 10 years of wandering as the walking wounded and 5 years of restoration by fire, I’ve learned exactly how men learn not to hear the Spirit’s cry. I’m sorry, I won’t name names. Be content if you know me well, to know the organization I have walked in for 30 years. Two months ago I determined after many political battles and soul searching to seek licensing with another Oneness Apostolic organization, even while still sitting in the very churches of an organization where God placed me to root out, pull down, destroy, throw down, build and plant. If you have questions about that statement, see Jeremiah 1:10 for the answer to that job assessment. Thank God he doesn’t look at pedigree when he chooses to call us to work in his kingdom.

Recently I spoke with a very well-known UPCI minister I know about the calling of God on ministry. When I told him that I knew about the calling God placed on my life at an early age. He made what to me was the most stupid comment I’ve ever heard come out of the mouth of a licensed minister. “That’s a scary thought. You know what calling God called you to! That terrifies me.” His personal attempt to interrogate me at that point met a road-block and I lit into him from the Word about the programs and politics of modern Pentecost.

Knowing what he knew of the storms I had gone through for 5 years, he said he was amazed it that I would think it was the will of God for God to place me in a position or office to correct a man of God who had stepped off into sin, heresy and pastoral abuse.

Now he was right…in one way. It wasn’t the will of God for all those things to happen.

The will of God would have been for one minister to NOT be stealing from his church building fund and for God to NOT have had to slap the same man out of the pulpit for attacking me over the pulpit for revealing his sin.

The will of God would have been for another minister to NOT listen to lies from a backslidden sinner against saints in his congregation and NOT be abusive to his saints in the counseling office.

The will of God would have been for a yet another minister to NOT be teaching a heresy that Apostolic Gentile believers had to keep the Law of Moses in violation of Acts 15.

The will of God would be that yet another minister NOT stop preaching holiness.

And finally, the will of God would be that his ministers, presbyters, elders and leaders keep justice and judgment and NOT sit back on their laurels and refuse to correct sin in their congregations and districts.

He was right in one way…but it is all a matter of perspective.

And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto her, Thou art the land that is not cleansed, nor rained upon in the day of indignation. There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey; they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasure and precious things; they have made her many widows in the midst thereof. Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they shewed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them. Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain. And her prophets have daubed them with untempered morter, seeing vanity, and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord GOD, when the LORD hath not spoken. The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord GOD. Ezekiel 22:23-31

Ultimately I sat that afternoon, looking at a man who now at a pinnacle of success in his life and ministry, is wandering lost, not hearing the voice of God, or at least not hearing the things God is wanting him to hear. What terrifies me most is that we have a whole new generation of Pentecostal ministers who seem to be able to hear the voice of God to get a message to preach to you or me, but who can’t hear the voice of the Spirit calling them to a place of repentance, righteousness and godliness in order to correct things in their lives. I sense he was seeking hard to find a program to bring his church revival, new life and growth, but the things God is calling to him to do…fast, pray, travail in intercession and weep between the porch and the altar for souls…he will not do!

Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God. Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD, Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. Joel 1:13-15

Let’s face it brethren, it’s not about finding a message to preach to “the sheep” when we are resisting God in listening to his voice about removing sin, or stumbling blocks or hindrances in our own life, walk and ministry! It’s not about finding a “camp meeting message” or a “conference message” to preach and wow our peers. If we start dabbling in pet sin or worse, wading in carnality we are in serious trouble. I’ve seen men attempt to silence the gifts of the Spirit in our congregations so that their sins did not get revealed before their congregations. It doesn’t work…even if we use the excuse that some of our saints are getting “out of hand” with the gifts so we have to rebuke them and silence or “bind” them to calm them down. Trust me… in 30 years around the apostolic movement; you hear a lot of really stupid excuses about why the gifts are silenced in a church. That one topped my charts.

Ministry is not even about finding something to preach to our people or listening enough to God to hear him for a message when we won’t name sin in our churches and call it out from the pulpit with a harsh rebuke, naming the sin! Now we live in an age where we have ministers hiding behind their man-made versions of apostolic leadership and self-appointed authority, who will neither give nor take correction from the word of God!

Who do you take your correction from, preacher? I pray it isn’t some other preacher 1,400 miles away who barely remembers teaching you in Bible college! Every man, every minister, needs to be under subjection to someone. Preferably it would be more than one other minister, and they should be close enough to actually see the way we live and conduct ourselves on a reasonably constant basis.

The word “autonomous” has been thrown up in my face by more than one regional bishop or district superintendent to defend their refusal to correct ministers of gross sin against the body of Christ. Like the high priests, Levites, Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ time, we’ve become so intoxicated on our callings and offices of ministry that we have entire organizations of ministers who think they are untouchable. They even teach a form of this as a doctrine over their pulpits, making their selves the President and CEOs of their local assemblies in violation of the word of God and the doctrine of the Apostles in the early church. They fail to realize that we as ministers are not the Head of the Body of Christ. Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, not the ministry. We are the servants of the Body. Come on Pentecost, it’s time to get real! I’m getting ready to rock so many boats of Pentecostal tradition that we’re all going to get sea-sick.

For the pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the LORD: therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered. Jeremiah 10:21

Is it so easy to sit back and try to teach in the flesh when God won’t anoint us with a message to preach anymore? Worse yet, it’s now easier for us to call in 5-10 different evangelists, special guest speakers and “Holy Ghost Crusaders,” because we are trying to avoid preaching something God told us to preach! We’ll use any venue we can from skits to guest speakers to cover for us while we drift aimlessly; trying to find a new program for the local church to follow while we avoid a message of judgment God gave us for the church! Is it that we have long since stopped listening to the voice of the Spirit, because He won’t say anything to us that we want to hear?

Worse yet, has God stopped talking to us entirely! How far have we drifted from God as a movement when men attempt to quash the voices of correction and direction God sends to them from venues not of their own choosing… or think that prophetic ministry cannot see what is going on in our churches when they visit. Has the prophetic voice of God backed away from us? Many of our churches have not had a prophecy, a tongues and interpretation or miracles in years. We can’t live forever spiritually on the testimonies from the one church in our district doing something for God. We need a Holy Ghost firestorm in every one of our churches!

For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men. As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich. They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of the wicked: they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper; and the right of the needy do they not judge. Shall I not visit for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof? Jeremiah 5:26-31

When God gives a minister a message to preach and he refuses and spends 3 months “teaching” the saints something he’s drawn up as a Bible or training lesson to excuse his refusal to preach what God gave him, and the Holy Ghost has to break in on him and yank him off his lesson and force him to preach something he did not want to preach and didn’t have the words for, there is something wrong spiritually in that ministry and in that assembly! Maybe you are in a church or pastoring a church that is on fire, friend. If that is so, then more power to you, but I’ve seen and heard things the last five years over the pulpits of Pentecost that have shaken me to the core of my being.

What causes ministers of God not to see the things of the Spirit? What causes spiritual deafness? Every guess would be a shot in the dark unless we look into the Word.

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: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Rev. 3:15-19

How does a man of God get to where he cannot hear from God or to where God cannot relate to him in a relationship? He’s neither hot nor cold. Not on fire. Not to a point to where he is completely backslidden. He’s dwelling in the land of mediocrity and carnality, to where he’s hit a happy balance and can be phased by either end of the spectrum.

The city of Laodicea according to one theologian was situated where two rivers joined, one a hot mineral spring that could bring healing and rejuvenation, and the other an icy cold river that quenched and refreshed. The mixing of the waters at this point produced a tepid, mediocrity could neither rejuvenate nor refresh, and because of this, Jesus said, he will spew us out of his mouth.

Let me pause a moment brethren and state for the Apostolic record, Jesus Christ was not addressing some pagan, mainstream, neo-Christian mainline denomination here. He was speaking to the church of the Living God, a church that has been baptized in Jesus name, filled with his Spirit, and teaching the entire Apostles doctrine, not just a group of people camped out on one verse out of the entire New Testament. So often when we listen to these verses, the tendency is to look outwardly to those men, ministries and denominations that have so far strayed from the light of the True Gospel as to be easily recognized by the naked natural eye.

No. He was not speaking of them. He gave them no acknowledgment. They were not even a blip on his radar. Jesus Christ only recognizes one church, and so should we. There are no organizational walls that keep the Body of Christ bound. No ministerial fellowship, no card-carrying group can solely espouse being his bride. To claim otherwise is heresy. He recognizes no “member” in His bride who has not repented, been baptized in His name and been filled with his Spirit. That is the only key to seeing the Bride, the Kingdom…and the only key to entering. Without this key you can’t even see this Kingdom.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. John 3:3-5

Jesus was not speaking to some church that has long espoused some ancient Nicean heresy or taken on some dogma creed of some apostate pseudo apostolic father or apologist. He was speaking to his bride, a blood-bought, water-baptized, Spirit-filled body of Christ that had grown so lethargic in their wealth, increased with the goods of this life and in need of nothing. They are a group of blood-bought men and women who have become affluent in this movement, set in their ways and programs to where the leading and guiding of the Holy Ghost no longer stirs them…We can do it with our own blessed talents, charisma, oratory, preaching, programs, concepts, ideas, literature and flesh, Pentecost! Nor will Jesus Christ accept a church that refuses his correction.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Rev. 3:19

Now we even call in special “Holy Ghost Crusaders” while we pack the church with visitors and call them all to the front to a specially organized area of the altar with tissues, altar counselors and an evangelist telling them exactly how to receive the Holy Ghost while a choir pumps up the music to excite and set the mood. It’s our modern method of Cath-ecostalism. Give us a generation and we’ll be shoving communion wafers down their throat with a sip of wine and telling them they have received the Spirit. Did God honor their coming? Yes. Did they receive the Holy Ghost? The Bible says if you repent, God forgives. If you ask, you receive. I believe they did…most assuredly, but have we cheapened their experience with God to make it just a “thing” and not an experience?

I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. 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; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. 2 Timothy 4:1-4

Yet, here still, is the dilemma…Someone who has not been preached under conviction for their sins by the power of the gospel has just come and repented of sins (many of whom have no clue that drugs, shacking up, drunkenness are the works of the flesh) they have no idea they have committed, because no one has preached them the unadulterated Word of God. Many do not even know what they are repenting of, but because God accepted them at their word, they then walk out and many never darken the door of the church again.

Did they have a biblical experience? Yes. Did something get birthed in them? They just sat under a 15 minute sermonette by an evangelist who only preached Acts 2:38 to them. The remaining first 37 verses of the chapter where Peter calls them a bunch of murderers and how their sins caused the Lord of Glory to be crucified remains un-preached. This leaves them to either immediately fall by the wayside if a church does not stay contact with them, or to try and reform them by teaching them in various classes.

God did not call the foolishness of teaching to save men. God chose the foolishness of preaching. In many cases they go through all these classes without any change of their conduct, outlook, appearance or lifestyles and I’ve even seen some made “covenant members” with the local church and authorized to hold positions in the church that never changed from the day they had their “Crusade” experience!

I’ve seen some cases where entire assemblies enter their sanctuaries totally devoid of prayer, minus a 2 minute formality amidst the functions of a service, never truly seeking the face of the Spirit to cleanse our thoughts, align our lives, walks and ministries to His will. Nationwide, our music has become entertainment to a large group of SMOs (Sunday-morning-only) who don’t know God as more than a distant second cousin, and mid-week Pentecostal midshipmen who have never truly taken the full measure of decision it takes to see if they really want to get with the message or just sit and park on a pew the next 20 years. Let me pause to say it as cold, calculating and burdened as I can…saint, sinner or minister, sir, there is a difference between just “being saved” and being totally and completely delivered, just as there is a great difference between attending a church and being a part of the church! We are fast becoming just a denomination and NOT Apostolic!

I currently attend a fairly large Pentecostal church that does not even have a prayer room. Despite having been blessed with a multi-million dollar church edifice, gymnasium and outbuildings, they attempt to pray in the hallway on one side of the building while saints, sinners and ministers alike enter and exit while congregating to chat, greet and meet, all the while showing absolutely no regard to those weeping and praying a short distance away…lukewarm, tepid. Our prayer rooms remain empty or worse yet, filled but silent of the voice of travailing intercessory prayer.

Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? Then will the LORD be jealous for his land, and pity his people. Joel 2:15-18

God pity the misfortunate sinners who should chance to wander into the altar in one large south-eastern Pentecostal church I was blessed to attend awhile back. While the minister did his best to perform one of his 2-hour filibusters of a sermon in front of his congregation and show off his great oratory skills that he would be unleashing on an annual minister’s conference in the deep south the following week, he accidently gave what some poor sinners must have thought was a 2-second altar call. As the sinners heeded his two second call to repentance, they were trampled in the aisles as the blessed saints were dismissed for lunch before they ever reached the altar area. God forgive us of such blatant ignorance!

Now in this generation we seek for something new, something different, a new ministry, a new song, a new sound, a new outreach methodology, a new program or training method in the church that will make us “cutting edge” and “current.” Our church attendance is not to be a blessing and a testimony of what God has done for us during the week. No, we come together to let the music ministry pump us up emotionally so we can jig and dance and turn the church into a nightclub scene for the same people who will never get near the altar if the preacher preaches them under conviction.

Some only wait for a new guest preacher to turn up a new hot topic for us to get inspired for a week and try something new…all the while letting church turn into a great “bless me club” for spoon-fed Pentecostal lapdogs in our plush, velvet-lined ruts.

I’m sorry, Pentecost. If I offend you, just do as those in my organization have done for years, look at me as an outsider and a trouble-maker, and one that won’t conform to their man-made, so called, “ethics,” not rooted or grounded in the Word of God. I’m sorry, but I don’t see anywhere in the Holy Writ where just because God called me to preach that I am now and elite and privileged-class of Pentecostal ministry that is above correction! For that matter, half the Pentecostal movement only has a “three-fold” ministry, because they’ve done killed off every apostle and prophet God sent them! Don’t believe it possible? Better read Matthew 23:29-36

How is it that we can draw up a set of by-laws that we don’t even follow and don’t align with the Word of God? How is it that we can pass ordinances that will not allow any of our preachers to correct one another or root out things which the Holy Ghost has chosen not to accept in our affluent boy’s club of misguided “ministerial organizations?”

While we crave and cry for gift ministry, power gifts, miracles signs and wonders in our ministries…has God grown silent to our search, because the one thing we still have dangling in our dying grasp from the few remaining shreds of any semblance of Apostolic leadership from bygone generations is the exercising of justice and judgment in leadership. The one thing we have in our power to exercise, we refuse to utilize, or worse yet, wield with absolute disdain and prejudice out of respect of persons, ministerial or organizations inclusion or exclusion, or worse yet, in regards to organizational bylaws and man-made ordinances and not in accordance with the word of God!

If that is too big of a verbal chunk for you to chew on without swallowing, let me explain in layman’s terms. How is it, brethren, when a minister brings a fault or accusation against another minister in our movement before the ministry and leadership…how is it that if he is not a member of our specific organization we will not hear his plea? Or worse, if he is a friend of ours that we respect, we will not hear a cry for judgment for some sin he has committed against another brother, be they saint or minister? Or worse yet, if the aggrieved person is not of our own particular organization’s “licensed” ministerial staff, we will not hear it? Understand when we do this, God is judging us, judging our ministries, judging our churches and in many cases, divesting us of revivals we have longed for simply because we will not exercise just judgment.

That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. 1 Thes. 4:6

Recently I watched a presbyter in one state (somewhere between the north and the south) refuse to judge a matter of absolute biblical heresy being perpetrated by one of his local ministers, even when half the ministers in the district knew of the wayward minister’s doctrinal heresy. After all, he’d only been preaching it for five years. Yet another short three years later another one of his ministers violated their own by-laws and stopped preaching the full Apostolic doctrine. When it was brought to that very same presbyter’s attention, he again refused correction.

I might have been frustrated if not for scriptures that show that when something like this happens, God revealed to me that judgment is actually taking place. God is currently judging his ministers to see if they will keep justice and judgment according to his Word. Will we take a stand for what is right? Or are we just an organizational hireling? Will we slip into the ranks of the false prophets of ages past who refused to correct, or worse refused to speak what thus says the Lord and fall into the ranks of the priesthood that will try and silence any voice of change, call for repentance, correction or direction that does not flow from our own throats? Or will we step to the forefront and cry aloud and spare not and speak what the Spirit is saying to the church age despite the unpopularity and infamy it will bring to our ministry from our own peers?

Like the vision of the angel with the ink horn, I believe God is sending his angels among the church of this hour seeking men and women of God who are sighing and crying for the sins of this nation, the sins of the church, the sins of the ministry. This nation is coming to its knees, not because of the nation’s sins and refusal to repent, but because the saints and ministers of the Most High will not humble ourselves and repent and cry aloud for the sins of this nation.

I believe God is currently putting his mark on a group of Apostolic men and women who are going to usher in a new era in the church age right before the Great Tribulation and the Rapture of the church. He is going to start with his ministry. We are headed for a war and not a war that will be fought by lackadaisical, lukewarm, cold-hearted, cold-spirited, Pentecostals in velvet-lined ruts of ease with their nice cars and Armani suits. God isn’t coming back for a wounded, whipped, half-backslidden, liberal, sissified, compromising, effeminate, carnal-minded, worldly, laid-back body of believers who don’t know what they believe and don’t know how to fight spiritual warfare.

While some ministers look at the mess I’ve seen and endured the past 5 years and some have even try to cast aspersions that there must be something wrong in my life and ministry for God to have placed me into such Euroclydon-class messes involving ministries and churches, I stand on the vow I renewed to God 5 years ago, when I told him I would go where he wanted me to go, do what he wanted me to do, and say what he wanted me to say. You’d better mean that when you say something like that, because it will cost you. It has cost me dearly.

That being said, let me draw the staff of the Word and get ready to smite the rock of Pentecostal traditions. Sit back, buckle your seatbelt and grab the hand rails. I’m getting ready to delve into areas of man-made doctrines that Pentecostals have given holy cow and Arc of the Covenant status to for the past 30 years or so. There is no way to be overly kind and sensitive when dealing with these issues, as they have become so steeped in Pentecostal tradition that they are taken as being directly from the Word of God. Sorry…they are not!

And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them. And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered. My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill: yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and none did search or seek after them. Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the LORD; As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flock; Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock; neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; for I will deliver my flock from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them. For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.

Ezekiel 34:1-12

I realize that Ezekiel 34 is probably the most un-preached chapter by the Pentecostal movement as a whole, but it is in there for a purpose, so it is time to hear about it. Pastor was used as a word only once in the New Testament in Ephesians when Paul was telling about the five-fold ministry. A pastor from the meaning of the Old Testament references in Ezekiel 34 and Jeremiah 2, 3, 10, 12, 17, 22 and 23, was simply a shepherd. Often he did not even own the sheep he was shepherding, but was hired to protect them and lead them in and out to water, food and shelter.

If you know anything about sheep at all, they are truly dumb animals. Personally, I think some pastors prey on that fact in this day and age, and have for the last 50 years in Pentecost. However, sheep cannot be driven. They must be led, but not led as is the style of Gentile princes and leaders, or even as the misguided pastorates of modern Pentecostalism. They must be led by a walking example, not a dominant, commanding leader, but someone they have learned is fair, friendly, just and nurturing.

I once asked a shepherd about sheep and what they will do if they are beaten by the shepherd. He looked at me and said, “Brother, they will run every time they see you coming.” Yet when I asked about those he has nurtured over the years, he told me they came running when they heard him walking or smelled him or saw him.

If you walk straight at a herd of sheep, even as a shepherd, you will see something common to their nature. They will scatter and then fall in behind the shepherd that they are used to. They will follow him. He’s built a relationship with them of loving, caring and nurturing. Tell me this is the example of the modern day Apostolic church in practice and principle instead of theory and I’ll question your integrity.

The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. 1 Peter 5:1-4

Peter’s words here echoed the commandment of Christ to Apostolic ministry. It is not something that can be argued with. Instead most will choose to merely ignore it or ascribe a different meaning to the words. There was no power, privilege, glory or monetary value to being a minister in the early Apostolic church. My how we’ve changed! Preaching is big money and big business for some in this day and age. Sorry, but if that is your model of ministry, you aren’t Apostolic!

Before you get upset with me…that was the POLITE version. You have no idea how much editing I had to do to get most of this to sound polite. That’s the problem with truth. Sometimes it doesn’t just hurt. It doesn’t taste good either! It goes down bitter, but it will be sweet in your belly if you let it get into your soul, Pentecostal.

Peter told the ministry to take the oversight, not the control or ownership of the flock. Overseers review how things are going and ensure that those who are in charge are doing right. He told them to take the job willingly and not be forced into it. Why? …Because there is no power or affluence in the position. If you think I’m nuts, Acts 6 reiterates this when church elected deacons to be over the affairs of the church. If you are worried about a loss of power or control, you might want to start questioning your motives and repenting. For the honest ministers out there, they realize there was an Acts 3 before there was ever an Acts 6. By then, there was a great fear and respect for the power of the Holy Ghost on the entire church. You don’t have to be in control as long as the Holy Ghost is, friend. That’s where our major problem is, we’ve become a pastor-led and not a Spirit-led church!

Now I’ll tell you why Peter told them to take their calling with a ready mind…and this will rock some of you so much you will stop reading. Here it is…New Testament ministers are NOT Levitical priests! There was no tithe assigned to them. They were there completely at the mercy of the Body of Christ. Yes…I know I just crossed theological swords with the entire UPCI…and half the rest of Pentecost as well, but that’s okay. Do me like your television set and turn me off. I’ll keep preaching anyway, because it is the truth. I learned from the best of you. Don’t worry. I’ll save the rest of the tithe and offering jazz for the end of this little message. Read on!

Peter also told them to take their ministerial oversight with a ready mind, not for filthy lucre. We get that all backwards in this day and age. Now many of our ministers get paid so well they come willingly to the task alright. The task was so thankless in Peter’s day that they had to pay them a salary. We put the emphasis on the filthy lucre Peter mentioned, but Peter’s emphasis was on the ready mind. They didn’t get tithes in those days of the Apostolic church. Let me tell you why. The tithes still went to the Levites by Jewish law. God didn’t take the New Testament priesthood out of the Levites. Read your Bible!

Peter said this because he wanted any type of pastoral ministry to be voluntary, willing and above all with the best interest of the flock of God in mind. There is a danger to taking the job for any other reason, or who do not care about the sheep.

Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD. Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD. And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the LORD. Jeremiah 23:1-4

We have men who have lost the heart of the servant among us and have taken on their leadership as lords over God’s heritage and ruling as the princes of the Gentiles by exercising lordship over their congregations. I’m sorry, but Pentecost, this debate was settled in the Word of God in Acts chapter 6, as I mentioned earlier. The Apostles had the CHURCH pick out deacons to rule the affairs of the church. They did not do it for them. They had the saints pick out the deacons. My how that has changed! They knew Jesus had said in Matthew 20 that they would not rule his people like the princes of the Gentiles did their people. They followed up with this in the book of Acts by having the people appoint their leading elders and deacons. I’m sorry if this upsets your apple cart and gives certain ministers in certain Pentecostal organizations a heart attack, but you will just have to get with God’s Apostolic mode of leadership, brethren. Bear with me, it is a lengthy read:

Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him. And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are able. And he saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with: but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father. And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren. But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. Matthew 20:20-28

Now we One God Pentecostals are notorious for taking every denominational person we meet into the Bible to Matthew 28:19 and showing them Jesus’ commandment to baptize in the Name, not in titles, then rushing them to Acts 2 to show them where the Apostles fulfilled that commandment. We’ve rubbed their faces in it for years, so now it is our turn Pentecostals. Let’s go from Matthew 20 to Acts 6 and see how the Apostolic ministry fulfilled Jesus’ commandment not to be in dominance and control over his saints. I hope you are enjoying the analogy!

And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch: Whom they set before the apostles: and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them. And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people. Acts 6:1-8

In these verses, we see the true governing function of the Apostolic church being set up, not ruled, regulated and led by preachers and ministry, because Jesus told them it would not be so among the Apostles. The early Apostolic church was ruled by elders and deacons…not preachers and not pastors. What was the “business” the Apostles were talking about? Running the church!

I’m letting that soak in before many of you start declaring I just committed the unpardonable sin of Pentecost and did something worse than blaspheming the Holy Ghost, by killing someone’s holy cow and questioning the model of modern Pentecostal governance and leadership, brethren. I’m know some preachers who would have already organized a lynch-mob and furnished them a rope with my name on it, but if I’m in the Word, I’m in the Word. Maybe you think this isn’t a salvation issue, but it does fall in the rank and file of obedience to the word of God, Pentecostal. I believe obedience is a salvation issue, don’t you?

The Apostlic ministry of the FIRST CHURCH gave their selves completely to prayer and ministering the word of God, not trying to govern a rapidly growing, even exploding assembly of saints! How dissimilar we are! No wonder we have so much preacher burn-out and men leaving the ministry. We try to run everything from the business meetings, church finances, nursing home visits, church appointments, and every aspect of the local and some district assemblies and we wonder why our brain is fried and we don’t have time to pray and don’t have the adequate time to study! We’re nuts to try and do something even Moses’ father-in-law said he could not do…run things by ourselves!

No, in 2009 we don’t give ourselves to prayer and the Word…we give ourselves to building a church that can support our retirement, developing our game of golf, vacationing in Barbados, developing our side businesses, retirement funds and money market accounts and deciding whether to preach at or just attend the next few conferences and district functions.

Let me drop in here some church history, pre-Pentecost, from the holy-writ:

Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. John 12:4-6

Sorry, but after Judas’ death you won’t see a reference to anyone of the disciples or Apostles keeping the bag among the eleven. They passed the purse off to the deacons as quickly as possible. Experience had revealed that Apostolic ministry and money don’t go together. When decisions were made in the early Apostolic church, nothing was done without the approval of the saints, elders and ministry. Look at Acts 15. You won’t find many in Pentecost today that would be content to allow that kind of liberty and freedom in the church. It dictates that we lose our nasty control over people, namely the “saints.” It’s too “Baptist” for out taste. (I say that as a former Baptist.) To do so would mean placing trust in the elders, deacons and saints.

Maybe that last verse I mentioned in Acts 6 shows where the modern distrust of laity falls in our ministry. After laying on of hands by the Apostles, the Bible says that Stephen , “full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people.” Maybe therein lies the modern Pentecostal fear of non-pastoral leadership of the churches. Flesh hates for someone to steal its thunder or eclipse our self-imposed importance and control.

I’m firmly set that any ministry that is not fully relying on the Holy Ghost is a fleshly, carnal ministry. Yet we wonder why there are church splits and divisions among us. We’ve never learned to rely completely and totally on God. No minister of God needs ever fear being usurped from his position of ministry if he trusts in the Lord. It is when we trust in the arm of flesh and our own methods of governance and self-control that we gain a curse from God and loose the umbrella of his protection over our ministries. It is time as a nation that our Apostolic ministers fall on our faces in repentance and fasting and prayer and restore the works of the early Apostolic church in fasting, prayer and seeking God’s face for this land, for His people and for our cities. Then and only then will we see the full restoration of Apostolic power and demonstration in our land.

Just think with me for a moment what it would be like if every minister in the Pentecostal movement had the ability to just let the elders and deacons run the business affairs of the church and we could all give ourselves to continuous prayer, fasting and study and ministry of the Word. Think of the anointing that would be birthed in us. Think of the power that would flood our messages. You say, “but I’d lose control of my church.” Get honest once before you die! Look at Peter in Acts 3...do you think a deacon or saint will run over that kind of Apostolic ministry? Well? Not willing to risk it are you? Not feeling that Apostolic after all, huh?

Sorry, it's not your church or my church, it is God’s…and if we get Apostolic governance and leadership back into accordance and alignment with the word of God we will see a change in the Apostolic movement. Obedience to the commandments of Christ will bring the blessings of God. Secondly it will get elders and deacons in the body of Christ involved in the work of the church. Third, it will restore Apostolic Leadership and with it the miracles, signs and wonders that we have been seeking for so long.

Finally, restoration of the Apostolic Model of Governance and Leadership will allow the ministries to give their selves totally and completely to prayer and the Word so they can cry out to God for the sins of a nation. With this will come the power, protection and provision of the early Apostolic church.

Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God. Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward. Isaiah 58:1-8

Now as a final side note, let me delve back into the realm of tithing and financial support as I mentioned I would. For all the UPCI cat’s that think that they still can mandate their saints pay tithes, and have formulated a doctrine about it, the Gentiles were never under the Law of Moses and no new commandment was given to them upon their conversion. In fact, Acts 15, the very same chapter God showed me to combat the mandatory dietary laws heresy I faced down 4 years ago, is the very same chapter that supports this fact also. The Gentiles were only given four mandatory things from the Law that the early Apostolic church mandated that the Gentiles keep:

But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses. And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter. And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they. Acts 15:5-11 (Peter)

And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me: Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things. Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood. Acts 15:13-20 (James)

It seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, Men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well. Acts 15:25-29 (Paul, Barnabas, Judas, Silas, and the entire assembly of Apostles and elders of the Apostolic church)

I’m having a really hard time trying to find the passage here where the Apostles ordained that the Gentiles pay tithes to either the Levitical priesthood or the ministry. Can someone please find me the tables of stone from where God came down and furnished the Gentiles their own Apostolic Gentile addition of the new and improved Mosaic Law? I know some of you are ranging in color from livid right now but I’m sorry, you simply won’t find it. You will find verses in the Old Testament under the OLD covenant where God told the Jews that the tithe was his. That was under the Law of Moses.

One of the worst and best things a Pentecostal minister ever did for me was to teach me a class on hermeneutics, and how to rightly divide the word and interpret scripture. It was the worst thing he ever did because I used it to totally destroy his philosophy on mandatory tithing. It was odd to say the least to watch a man who knew I still paid tithes get red with anger when I used the class he taught me to tear up his own mandatory tithing doctrine...so much for brotherly love.

And before you get so bent out of shape at me that you are calling the Gambino family to try and finance a hit on me, let me explain that I also know that Abraham paid voluntary tithes to Melchisedec, King of Salem after returning from the slaughter of the kings. He gave a tenth of all the spoils…not a tenth of his possessions, not a tenth of his income…a tenth of his spoil. However, we also see that Jacob vowed at the rock that if God would bless him he would give a tenth of all that God gave him and blessed him. Abraham was the father of the faithful and that even Levi paid tithes as yet unbegotten in the loins of Abraham.

We also know that the scripture says the things that were written before were written as an ensample for us that followed. Now if you want to make a doctrine of mandatory tithing out of that, then more power to you…heretic. In truth, the Law of Love, Mercy and Grace far outweighs the Law or carnal ordinances, which by the way, was done away at Calvary if you read Ephesians 2:

But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; Eph. 2:13-20

If you want to know my outlook on tithing, it is a simple one. How can I give less under Grace than someone who was under the Law? If Abraham was the father of the faithful, he was an example for us in giving voluntarily. Don’t try to throw a stumbling block or occasion to fall in front of your saints by dragging them back under Mosaic Law. Sorry, I just wouldn’t look good in a robe and sandals. Where do I stand on “tithing?”…I think Paul said it best to the Corinthian saints.

For as touching the ministering to the saints, it is superfluous for me to write to you: For I know the forwardness of your mind, for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Achaia was ready a year ago; and your zeal hath provoked very many. Yet have I sent the brethren, lest our boasting of you should be in vain in this behalf; that, as I said, ye may be ready: Lest haply if they of Macedonia come with me, and find you unprepared, we (that we say not, ye) should be ashamed in this same confident boasting. Therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren, that they would go before unto you, and make up beforehand your bounty, whereof ye had notice before, that the same might be ready, as a matter of bounty, and not as of covetousness. But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. 2 Cor. 9:1-7

The Prophet's Prayer

2009-03-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

First published June 26, 2008 at 4:00pm

And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation. And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people. Exodus 32:7-14

And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin -- ; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. And the LORD said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book. Exodus 32:30-33

Moses was the greatest prophet who ever walked before God, one called-out of 40 years on the back side of the desert to see God face to face on mount Horeb and live. Sent by God to lead the people of God out of Egyptian bondage, he faced the most daunting task of any ministry, in leading over 2.5 million, stubborn, rebellious, undisciplined people through one of the greatest deliverances and the greatest jail-break recorded in history. The fact that he was on the mountain 40 days in total fast, only to intercede for his nation and return to the mountain top for a second 40 day fast, totally sustained by the divine presence of God, is awe-inspiring.

Where was there ever a prophet of God like Moses that spoke to God face to face as a man speaks to his friend? Not even the exploits of the hot-tempered Elijah, who called down fire on a water-soaked sacrifice, slew 400 prophets of Baal, and even captains and fifties who came to take him by force, could out-shine the deeds of this man of God who called for plagues, divided seas, wrought deliverances and smote the Rock to water thirsting millions.

Moses understood one great truth, only those that walked with God day to day will ever know him in the power of his fullness and see the miracles, signs and wonders of the God who himself became mankind’s greatest prophetic intercessors. Hear the prophet’s prayer.

Very recently, I had a friend ask me what the prophet’s prayer is, based on a dream or vision they had had. I think she already knew the answer, but was feeling out my spirit to see what I would say, and if we were of a kindred spirit. Simply put, it is the prayer of the Prophetic Intercessor, those men or women of God who have walked with God in the secret places of the Most High, day in, day out, through the daily grind of life until they have been consumed with holy passion and become totally dependant on His presence and the yearning in their souls for more than just the common and mundane realms of the church, then placing themselves in the gap of intercession between lost mankind, a backslidden church, or even apostate ministries and the wrath and judgment of an angry God.

These men and women, these friends of God, these ones who have plugged into a hidden world around us, have walked with God through the darkest valleys of despair, faced the demons of their own soul and vanquished them, felt the cold clammy hands of death grasping at their spirit, climbed the rocky peaks, often alone, to wage war with the forces of hell and topple princes of cities, regions and nations in spiritual warfare. They have known the loss of friends precious to them during their time and moments of weakness when the enemy attacked at a precise moment when they were too weary to fight anymore. Only they will ever know the calling of the prophetic intercessor, those ones always planted on their faces in God’s presence, those who have turned from sin, the weights and cares of life, the world and even their own fleshly desires.
I asked before, now I ask you again, Apostolic Pentecostals, where are our prophetic intercessors?

Where are these men and women, these oddballs, these misfits, these ones that never seem to fit in, these ones who from the dawning of their existence and even the very forming of their bodies in their mother’s womb, have been totally out of sync, out of phase, out of touch with the cares of life, the ebbs and flows of society, these ones who from their earliest precognition have known that they didn’t fit in and were square pegs in the round holes of life? Where are these men and women, the fifth-wheels, the dregs of the church, the backwards ones, the outcasts, the fifth sparrows, those longing ones, the ones who march to the beat of a different drummer that resoundingly resonates from the backside of eternity, calling them to a destiny a wide-cut different from the masses?

Where are these ones who from the very core of their being have a hunger, a drive, an enveloping passionate desire, like fire shut up in their bones, to constantly seek out the presence of their God in prayer, fasting and intercession, so that they may drink from a fountain that few will ever drink from even in the Apostolic church? Where are these men and women who have drunk deep from the cup of trembling and known the pain, angst and agony of travailing in the Spirit for souls yet unborn, unreachable backsliders, friends long fallen, apostate ministries and even the hearts of men…hearts so hardened by sin as to become untouchable and reprobate? Where are their intercessors?

These are the ones that somehow the lime-light of society and even the church have seemingly passed them by. They shimmer and dance outside the eyesight of the common pew-dweller and out-of-focus ministries, toiling unnoticed except by THE ONE by whom they have been called “Friend.” These are the ones that by nature of their calling to prophetic intercession have become spiritual tuning-forks by their long walk in His presence, coming into full phase with the heartbeat of lost humanity and pouring the oil of healing into the hearts, souls and spirits of lost humanity. These are the last days prophets and prophetesses of the Apostolic church, born in a fire they cannot quench, hungering for a move of God they have not yet seen, yet they feel it coming in the very far reaches of their souls, reverberating in the far reaches of their ever-waking consciousness like thunder over the mountainous horizon. See the lightning and feel the thunder of the prophet’s prayer rise up in your soul.

Recently, I lost two good friends who walked in this realm. One knew of his prophetic calling. The other did not, or denied it, as yet unrevealed to her. The first, the more seasoned, fell to the treachery of picking the wrong woman for his mate, and sacrificed his calling on the altars of the personal desires of life. The other, new to her calling, died to the inner attack of a hidden seed of bitterness planted by the enemy during her childhood, and would not allow the light of the Holy Ghost to shine into her heart and remove the very thing that had taken root and was killing her, and by so doing, destroying one of the greatest fledgling ministries I have ever been privileged to witness, a soul-winner of extraordinary caliber, one called and consecrated to reaching the forgotten realms of hurting people in the last-days harvest fields…the domestic violence and homeless shelters.

Somehow we must evolve, Apostolic Pentecostals. Can we ignore the sonorous rumble of the cry of the intercessors among us? Where are the ones who have given up their aspirations of personal greatness in glorifying their own ministries and have taken the horns of the altar in a death-grip to cry out and groan in their spirit, travailing for the fallen ones? Who will stand in the gap and plead for this generation? Hear again the impassioned plea of Judah.

Now therefore when I come to thy servant my father, and the lad be not with us; seeing that his life is bound up in the lad's life; It shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, that he will die: and thy servants shall bring down the gray hairs of thy servant our father with sorrow to the grave. For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to my father for ever. Now therefore, I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the lad a bondman to my lord; and let the lad go up with his brethren. For how shall I go up to my father, and the lad be not with me? lest peradventure I see the evil that shall come on my father. Genesis 44:30-34

Where are the Intercessors, those prophets and prophetesses of God that are so plugged into his presence that they feel the heartbeat of the souls of mankind? Who among us will find a place of solitude and pray the prophet’s prayer? Where are the intercessors that have gotten fed up with business and church-as-usual? There is no more time for dead church...not one more dead service. The sands of time are running out, and the cry has gone out to awake the prophetic intercessors.

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. Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins. James 5:16-20