John The Baptist TV Forum » Topic: Preaching with 'Authority'

John The Baptist TV Forum » Topic: Preaching with 'Authority' http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/topic/2673 John The Baptist TV Forum » Topic: Preaching with 'Authority' en-US Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:42:08 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/search.php ValleyAnt on "Preaching with 'Authority'" http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/topic/2673#post-46602 Mon, 19 Sep 2011 21:56:29 +0000 ValleyAnt 46602@http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/ Bruce, you're right that we should speak what God lays on our hearts. I kept a journal about what happened in my five months in that church (I call them 'five months of Grace') in which the Lord taught me a great deal and became very present and where signs and so many things happened that not all can be spoken of. After several church members had secretly come to me, trying to make me their pastor (I was only in my 20s then), I re-directed them to their church leadership (who were in their 50s and 60s). This was not enough for the pastors. In the end, the church leadership and criminals had a meeting together (since some of the criminals were on the church board) and agreed to kick me out the church. They offered me money to leave not just the church, but the city and the state too. "And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written... Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, 'Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.' So all bore witness to Him, and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth" (Lk. 4). They ended up trying to pitch Jesus over a cliff. I wish things didn't happen as they did in that church; but I have to admit in all honesty that the happenings of those 'five months of Grace' were glorious; just glorious. I told some friends that Hollywood couldn't dream up or reproduce it though it all seems like a movie and not real life. You have a small fellowship, and I look forward to having a fellowship where I can speak freely about these and other like things face to face with those who are like-minded. In the meantime, I'll share bits and pieces here as I have opportunity. Glorious stuff! "Whoever boasts, let him boast in the Lord" (1Cor. 1). And I look for opportunity! And pray for me, those who have Grace, that God will make His will and way clear for me in this season. Thank you! Bruce Skelton on "Preaching with 'Authority'" http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/topic/2673#post-46407 Sat, 17 Sep 2011 02:16:06 +0000 Bruce Skelton 46407@http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/ Bruce. Hi Valleyant. I believe if God lays something upon ones heart that needs to spoken out, then it needs to spoken. The prophets always spoke when the Lord gave them his word to speak forth. The Lord then told the prophet that if the people rejected it, (His word) they weren’t rejecting the prophet, they were rejecting the Lord. 1Sa 8:7 And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. In our small fellowship, everyone can speak what the Lord has placed on their hearts, and if what is being said doesn’t line up with the word of God, then they are corrected by someone else. Mat 7:28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: Mat 7:29 For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. In Christ, Bruce. ValleyAnt on "Preaching with 'Authority'" http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/topic/2673#post-46354 Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:23:59 +0000 ValleyAnt 46354@http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/ Hey, Bruce. You're right. I just saw yesterday something on Joel Osteen on TV where they questioned his 'don't worry, be happy', ear-tickling doctrine (I think it was CNN or something). I looked back on the happenings written of above and saw that everything happened in twos. I also acknowledge that if God had sent someone who was prepared, the outcome would have been very different, and perhaps in it, revival would have come. He knew it wouldn't work out for me to go there, but I believe His intention in it was to make a boast and manifest Jesus' finished work on the Cross (His superior authority and power) and His superior wisdom to the watching principalities. I was just happy to see what He did: "My soul will make its boast in the LORD; the humble will hear of it and be glad" (Ps. 34). Amen. Bruce Skelton on "Preaching with 'Authority'" http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/topic/2673#post-46231 Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:03:59 +0000 Bruce Skelton 46231@http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/ Hi ValleyAnt. Quote. “Some say that Christians can be too serious. Heresy. The truth is that Christians these days aren't near serious enough” I couldn’t agree with you more. If a person is not serious about his faith, then this will lead to apathy, and may continue to apostasy, being a prime target for the devil to use. 2Ti 4:3 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; Christians these days don’t like sermons that convict their hearts. They like sermons that make them feel good. They call it being positive. If one is in a fellowship, and not being convicted by the teaching, then that one is probably not growing. In Christ, Bruce. ValleyAnt on "Preaching with 'Authority'" http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/topic/2673#post-46215 Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:46:09 +0000 ValleyAnt 46215@http://www.johnthebaptisttv.com/bbpress/ The Lord Himself inspires my heart, because I had no inspiration when I arrived here. For Christ's sake, here is an expose into some of the Lord's doings which were hidden from the public's eyes. God knows that only those He approves are approved and not those who boast in their supposed 'accomplishments in Christ'. Some say that Christians can be too serious. Heresy. The truth is that Christians these days aren't near serious enough. Shane Idleman, in Andrew Strom's articles, asks, 'Should we preach with authority?' That we have to ask this shows the depths to which we have fallen. It's like asking, 'Should Jesus have <had the audacity to have> healed?' and 'Did God create Man to rule and exercise <Jesus Christ's> dominion over Creation <and satan>?' The answer to all three questions is an emphatic 'YES'. I don't want to be long on this topic that extends both ways into eternity, so I'll cut to an experience I had in a church regarding whether or not we should preach with authority and why. I think even a five-year old, wide-eyed and mystified though such a one may be, will find the following easy to understand. Hopefully, so will those who wish to 'judge everything with the Bible' and those who use 'exegesis' (and so tend to 'exit Jesus') along with those who 'eisegesis', however you spell it (and can never say, 'I see Jesus'). Before God sent me to a church, He showed me the iniquity and corruption of the Jezebel spirit via the permission of the Ahab spirit that gave the enemy total free reign to utterly destroy the church from the inside out. Just like with Ahab and Jezebel in the Bible, God's Grace was evident in that He shared with me that though this iniquitous couple was in rebellion against Him, still He willed to bring them blessings through revival and reformation (like the city of Nineveh and Sodom and Gomorrah). This church was 'full of the absence of the Lord'. There was a spiritual chasm where God should have been. One day, as the pastor attempted to 'be cool', preaching about politics and which candidate was right (etc. and blah), certain criminals in the church snickered among themselves when the pastor suddenly said that America's real problems is Christians in error. Seeing that the criminals were 'corporate level' satanist plants in the church, I could only guess that they snickered because they knew this was right on. I still sided with this Ahab pastor and his Jezebel wife though they were in error, and because they were making fools of God and for sure of Christians, I opened my journal, which I carried with me, and began to write to God: "If You must make fools of us in order that You may be glorified, then do it. Because we are either fools of ourselves or are fools for Jesus' sake." Ie. every soul is a fool for one or the other: for Jesus to salvation or for the flesh/satan to damnation. We're all fools already, I said, so God may as well glorify Himself in it. Then I stepped outside, and God was standing there to my left. (No need to draw attention to the fact He was outside the church and not inside it.) Then I said to Him, "Is it Your intention to glorify Yourself here or not?! The satanists and the pastors are jockeying for the glory that belongs to You, fighting each other to sit on the throne of the people's hearts. But there are things You have given to us humans and things that belong only to You. Glory, honor, and praise belong to You. Take them." I then went into the church and sat back down. Suddenly, the pastor, still trying to 'look cool' stated that God doesn't condemn Christians who smoke, drink, etc., and then come to church; that He isn't burdened down/upset/focused on small things like that, but that what He is after (almost quoting word for word Ps. 51:6, The Message) is righteousness "from the inside out." At this, and for the first time in the church, I said, "Amen!" The pastor then said that God will pull down all satan's <and man's> hidden works in the churches and will be glorified. (It was impossible for this man who compromised and made deals with known satanists in the church to say this and offend them.) Again, I said, "Amen!" The pastor looked back at me, and what happened next is probably only remembered on the tape recording the message that day. As I saw it: The Holy Spirit suddenly just apprehended this man, and he began to speak with authority. He didn't yell or shout or look severe or mean or dominating. His words were no longer spoken for man's sake but for God's sake; and probably every living thing on that church property was aware of it and all that happened next. As the pastor spoke, I saw his anointing within (his pastoral anointing and maybe prophetic, who knows) begin to spill out of the area of his solar plexus like the aurora borealis (the northern lights). It looked like a fragrant oil and also looked like the aurora borealis as it was multi-colored and issued/danced slowly from his chest, spreading into the congregation. As this happened, I saw two white pipes (looking like drainage pipes) appear behind him, at the level of his ears, and right above his two shoulders. They seemed connected to the wall behind him behind which was the outside of the church. The Holy Spirit began to enter the church through these white pipes in the form of white smoke so dense that as soon as it spilled out of the pipes, it fell to the floor. This smoke traveled slowly into the congregation as the pastor preached. The effect on the congregation: the criminals in the church looked like ants squirming under the magnified glare of the sun through a magnifying glass; they squirmed in their seats as if under an intensely bright and distressing light. I saw the spiritual chains on the hearts of the attendants (chains imposed on them by both the criminals and the pastors) begin to slowly crack, break, and fall off. The air was charged with a very quiet electricity as if we were in the eye of a hurricane. For the first time in my five months there, some people in the congregation began to breathe, 'Amen' and "Yes, Lord'. The tension that always hung in that church was slowly melting, and the people were beginning to adjust comfortably in their seats as the pastor held their gaze. Looking at my friend to my left (I sat in the back of the church to observe what was going on), who was the pastor's apprentice, I saw that he was pressed against his seat as if afraid to be tossed forward. His eyes remained wide at the pastor for the duration of this event (it seemed like five minutes, but I'm sure it was probably only two). Neither he nor anyone else there had heard the pastor preach with authority, because he never had. There were only two people not swept up in this moment: me and the pastor's Jezebel wife. With great concern, she kept glancing at the criminals sitting to her left, obviously concerned that the way her husband was preaching was grieving and vexing them (and her too). She looked like she was ready to interrupt her husband at any second... and did. About two or three minutes into this event, the pastor's wife suddenly spoke out, some wisecrack to her husband. He paused, blinked, and looked at her. She repeated the wisecrack, and he chuckled and responded to her. As soon as he responded to her, I saw the anointing within him recede at once back inside, and I saw the Holy Spirit, who was filling the sanctuary in the form of white smoke, retreat back outside through the two white pipes, and the pipes disappeared. Not at all surprisingly, the pastor then returned to Jezebel-approved, non-authoritative speaking for the rest of the service. Just as I'd been shown in a vision, she was consciously steering the church away from God and the blessings He was obviously pouring out in that instance. The pastor had been a fool of himself for a long time; but for a short stretch of time (two to three minutes), he was a made a fool for Christ's sake. We are a society of men whose fears motivate them to repress women who then stand up in rebellion and manipulate men who then relinquish their God-given birthright to rule with Grace and Authority. (It's an exquisitely clever plan of satan's, and it works very well.) Understandably, those who've seen the abusive and domineering authority of so many men (and those abused by people, especially men, in authority) want nothing to do with any type of authority. But in this, they are resisting God, because God created authority, not the authorities who abused or wronged us. If we resist authority, we manipulate everyone who can be in a place of authority. I've seen abused women who now believe that 'strength' <in a man> equals abuse. They therefore seek out (or emasculate) men who have denied God's call on them to walk in godly, not earthly/sensual, authority, and they often unwittingly side with the Jezebel spirit as they become adversaries of God. In the church spoken of above, Jezebel had the most to lose if the pastor was strengthened in his call as a man of God (ie. if God would take over the church); but God made no move in that church, and no miracle or deliverance or healing happened there, until men spoke to Him authoritatively, and until men spoke to men with authority. Some say that Christians can be too serious. Heresy. The truth is that Christians these days aren't near serious enough.