Wednesday 10 February 2010

The Order of the Holy Spirit

One Hundred years ago something started to shift.
Something seismic happened, which the devil wanted to make sure never happened again.
So , in direct response, his ragings increased something like 10 fold. History is now there for everyone to see, but in the space of one short century, lest we concentrate any more time and energy to what just happened in Wales and Azusa Street and the Black Forest in Germany, he pulled and nudged and guided and directed left-brain locked humans:
into two world wars
inwhich callous generals sent wave after wave of human flotsam into the path of new killing machines in trench warfare
he inspired men to think it a good idea to arrange for themselves an Acts paradise of shared property and possessions without new birth and by superimposition from above in the name of atheism (Communism by way of Marx)
and to do this in such a way that in both Russia and China the biggest swathes of indiginous population up until this date were simply vaporised at the whims of dictator leaders.

Using age-old spiritism on one side and a hubristic left-brain hook-up on the other, he inspired the cleverest nation on earth to think they were weaving for themselves a completely new salvation that somehow involved the Aryan race, and the destruction of every living Jew in range by means of a clever mass organised purpose-built infrastructure that involved gas ovens.
And so the century continued, interspersed with other huge scale disasters such as the 1918 flu pandemic which killed more than the rest of the First World War.

Through the direct cat and mouse influence of one totally given to his schemes, the devil-inspired Chairman Mao Tse Tung, the Americans were drawn in hook line and sinker to a war that was impossible to win in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, the pincer movement back in the west was to so use the domestic disillusionment caused by this raging to further lock people up in their left-brains, such that by now all intelligentsia were now continuing in the very thought processes that had led up to the second world war in Germany..."the fact that clearly God was dead", "church was finished" and all that remained was the French philosophic movement of Sartre and Camus and existentialism. I was in University at the very tail end of this and read every so often of another student's death as in direct logical conclusion, another would hurl him or herself to her death off a high building.

So what was this thing that the devil was so sure he did not want further investigated?

Listen! It wasn't just the rediscovery of the baptism in the Spirit and the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit as principally outlined in 1 Corinthians 12-14, and referred to continuously if not obliquely at several points in Acts, as well as phrases such as "laying on of hands" in Timothy, and "powers of the age" to come as in Hebrews.

No.Something far greater was happening on the floor through Evan Roberts. Something that has scarce been mirrored since through nearly 100 years of programmed, progressive Pentecostal effort.

It was a COMPLETELY new Order. The Order of the Holy Spirit.
Where the One actually sent to prepare a Bride for the Son was allowed to fulfil His task, probably for the first time in such a corporate way since the Book of Acts was first written.

Now although, initially , in Wales at least, it was only one man who really got this order, who really understood how to move with it, a man called Evan Roberts, IT was Never
I repeat Never
I repeat Never
the Holy Spirit's intention to ever again raise up another human pyramid around a charismatic man,
a charismatic leader,
who would continue the line that the devil began in the garden
after his own order
which always involves pyramids of power based on the most willing to fall into line with his whims.
The devil only understands pyramids.
It's how he runs his own unseen kingdom.
Anyone falling into line with his unseen kingdom will build according to this pyramid.
The most obedient will look like the Italian mafia. Or Chinese Chairman Mao. Or Russian Lenin and worse still Stalin.
The less obedient will look like
Bill Johnson
Joseph Prince
Morris Cerullo
Benny Hinn
Yongghi Cho
Terry Virgo
Frank Viola
People who cultivate a culture that revolves around them. Without meaning to.
Simply because they have never learned to listen to the prophetic.
That somewhere within them is a blueprint of "the fathers" and how they have always run things, rather than being diligent to seek out how the Holy Spirit runs His church
as laid out in new books appearing by people like Jack Fortenberry (Corinthian Elders).
And with each new insight or angle, these other charismatic dazzlers write a book in their name which further cements
the idolatrous notion of a symbiotic relationship in the people of God.

Remember, the same spirit that works in unbelievers to call the Apostle Paul Zeus one minute, then when he refuses to play ball, they stone him,
is the same spirit at work in the church....
To the extent that the "independant self delusion is not dealt with". (See the rest of the contents of this blog or read the link to Norman Grubb's book "Yes I am".)

If I may I will write that again.
To the extent that a gathering of believers do not believe or are muzzy about who they are now since the Cross, is the extent they are still able to be manipulated by the spirit that takes its blueprint from the devil's pyramid order.

So God has instituted a way of running things
that does not involve a Pastor at the head of it.
That does involve apostles and elders.
But obliquely and subtly.
Like Evan Roberts.

If you can understand how a man can run things face down on the floor.
Then you can understand the New Order.
If you can understand how a man can run things by appearing to do nothing directly then you can start to understand a third level church.
If you can understand Moses standing on a hillside with a battle raging, with two men at his side lifting his arms....then you are starting to see it.
If you can see a group of men kind of piggybacking each other in a kind of tag game, delivering the Word in sequence , in the sequence the Holy Spirit shows, as the Holy Spirit gives utterance and all in the powerful Presence of the Holy Spirit

such as we saw oh so briefly in the London brothers at Friends meeting House in 1974-5.
As we saw oh so briefly at the beginning of their influence in the 70s, the brothers in Fort Lauderdale , Derek Prince,Don Basham,Ern Baxter,Bob Mumford etc.that so radically changed the way we did things in Britain.

If you can see the outbreak in Toronto in 1994, and understand that although it appeared to revolve around the couple John and Carol Arnott- THAT WAS NOT THE SUM OF ITS STRUCTURE.

If you can start to see in the Spirit what He was wanting to start doing through the platforms of Lakeland ,Florida in 2008.....and those who were there, it was not simply to build around the one man flame thrower Todd Bentley, although we must honour him as the fire-starter...well this end of heavenly proceedings...

But an order was starting to form. The same order that would have matured a hundred years earlier if Evan Roberts not been knocked out of the flow.

Yes God uses ministries. Men and women. Yes there is a sort of structure to things. Kind of familial. Yes there is mutual respect. Actually it is more like a dance in the flow of the Holy Spirit.

But once people actually understand what a ministry before God is. Once people understand the first ever post I wrote which can be found in Dan's Vaults and on his site....which was the words of Ed Miller.
A ministry is just a taxi driver to the throne of God. Once he has brought a believer there, his role is finished.

Ministry, and in particular 3rd level apostolic ministry is simply the presentation of Christ as a believer. Laying the foundation of Christ AS that person in a believer.
Ripping away the false delusion of an independant self, so that a human being can begin for the first time to live as was always his or her destiny....knowing Christ in them as them.

The point of what we are calling the Key of David way of running meetings is that believers experience this new order.
That they learn how to function in it, as was happening in Florida, and now appears to be continuing in IHOP Kansas.

All the men in the ministry list above are people with a David heart. Yongghi Cho even calls himself David.
But the first David, probably through exhuberance, and a lack of due diligence

returned the Ark to Jerusalem on a New cart. He was returning to "the fathers way of doing things"...by this I mean, not his spiritual fathers...because he would have then known to do it right, according the Levitical pattern...
No I mean "fathers" in the generic sense.
The way the world does things. The humanly expected method. The way that does not involve knowing the heavenly pattern. The default "pyramid" pattern that was drawn up by the father of lies. The one that does not involve relationship. Sensitivity.

A pattern which may not reveal itself straight away, but one that emerges pretty soon in the form of anger, frustration, fear, domination, and ultimately if not corrected
ICHABOD - the Glory is gone.

I believe when we receive revelation and the manner we receive revelation to be important. Like the heaps of stones, the waymarkers of the patriarchs.

I received the revelation of the New Cart way of doing things, the incorrect way, in precisely this context. Now God never allowed me to bring what I was seeing, He used me to bring something else. But it all surrounded, funnily enough in the context of this post, Wales.

I was in a Cinderella role in a Welsh Conference quietly helping out with some children's work. Actually not in the meetings at all. This was around 1983. There was an oppression affecting all of us. One aspect to it was some kind of Jezebel spirit coming through the women as well as control I guess coming through the men.
So the leader doing the kid's work and myself really gave ourselves to intercession. Actually we had no choice. Our guts were gripped by such an intense feeling of helplessness and powerlessness, and here we were trying to look a bit encouraged for the conference kids. Precisely then, and in that conference did I then get this whole gripping revelation about charismatics bringing the Ark back home on a New cart. But it is not until this blogin the last 2 years, that I have seen so clearly what we have been doing.
As soon as I got this clear breakthrough in revelation, the very next morning absolutely everybody was called into the main hall to seek God together. God used me to give a breakthrough prophetic word for the conference. I think that was my first in a conference setting. It was a clear prophetic promise concerning the significance of that conference for the whole of Wales. At that time there was so little happening in Wales as compared with England.

A breakthrough Word sets the tone of a conference or meeting. It is like an invasion of the Kingdom of God into what may have felt up until then quite a staid, normal human gathering, with nothing happening.

I am sharing this, not to draw attention to myself, but simply to say this post has already had accompanying signs to it. The material is not new, although it comes with greater clarity.
If we want the glory of God to return to God's House, we have to learn to do things according to the heavenly pattern and be extra diligent about not building any more symbiotic Zeus Clubs.
********************
This post was nudged by this Facebook post below and my personal desire to nail exactly what my misgivings are with people being so evidently used by God like Bill Johnson and Rob Rufus and Joseph Prince.
New Creation Church Is NOT A Cult!Share
Stanley Wong

Sunday, 07 February 2010 at 23:30
For the past few weeks, I have been playing Joel Osteen's DVD sermon, "A New Season of God's Mercy (Favour)", at my stall over and over again. Last Saturday, a first-time customer saw the DVD sermon and warned me to be careful of his teachings. She learnt that I was from NCC and immediately gave me a disapproving look and told me to "be careful of these cults; their teachings are not based on the bible". She also said that the preachers are promoting themselves only.

Despite she being my customer, I could not resist telling her off. I told her that she can disagree with NCC's teachings but she cannot label NCC as a "cult". It seems that the term "cult" is freely thrust upon any church that does not seem to conform to the preaching or theologies of mainstream/traditional churches, especially if the church in question does not belong to any recognized denomination. I'm sure that Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostals and other denominations differ and disagree with one another on certain aspects of theology but you don't hear their church members labeling the other churches as cults.

Since 17 Dec 2008, I have been regularly attracting hits on my blog through google search. Anyone want to venture a guess on the googled keywords? Yes, you've guessed right: "new creation church cult" (see picture, left) and the reason why google direct them to my blog is because of the article I posted on 17 Dec 2008 - "Is New Creation Church a cult?".


In that post, I reprinted an article which described the characteristics of a cult, and I think it is worthwhile to reiterate the key points of that article here:

1. A cult, by modern standards, is any group that incorporates mind control to deceive, influence and govern its followers.

2. The mind control, or brainwashing, exerted by cults often take the form of at least several of the following elements:

a) A totalitarian control over the lifestyle and time of its members - Many cults tend to dictate exactly what its followers should read, eat, how and with whom they should spend their time, and even what they should do in off hours. This totalitarian control is necessary for the leaders to indoctrinate the followers in everything they do, and is also an attempt to separate them from anything not associated with the cult. This is why cults often live together in groups.

b) A charismatic, self-appointed leader with complete authority - Cult members are taught not to question the teachings, practices, or ideas of the leader. Many cult leaders truly are charismatic people, and are able to influence people to believe them. One very clear identifying element dealing with the leader of a cult is that the leader will always focus the attention and veneration of the members upon himself or herself. At the heart of a cult usually lies a very self-centered and self-seeking person.

c) A focus on withholding truth from non-members - Many cults teach their followers to be completely open and truthful within the group, while at the same time they are encouraged to be secretive and evasive when questioned by people outside of the group. Only specially-commissioned members are appointed to recruit members from outside. New members are usually encouraged to keep silent or even lie, especially to their families and close friends.

The three elements listed above are very successful ways to create a group mentality, an us-against-them way of looking at things. This is essential for any cult that wants to keep its members. The more afraid of the outside world the members become, the more strongly and faithfully they will keep within the safe fold of the cult.



I regularly attend New Creation Church's Sunday worship service together with my family and about 19,000 other people, and from my personal experience, I can tell that we are not a bunch of tightly controlled zombies worshiping Pastor Prince. Pastor Prince himself has also encouraged us not to just blindly accept everything he says but to check his preaching with what we read in the bible for ourselves.


Pastor Prince's sermon CDs are available for sale at the Rock bookshop and on the online store, and those sermon CDs, which date from the year 2000 and represent hundreds of hours of preaching, are easily accessible to any critic who wish to mine for any evidence of Pastor Prince preaching heresy or focusing the attention and veneration of the members upon himself.

Sad to say, many of these critics shoot their mouths off based on hearsay rather than examining the evidence at the source. At this juncture, let me express my utmost respect for Pastor Kenny aka blogpastor who, in his blog post "Give Joseph Prince A Fair Hearing", said "Pastors should not just go by hearsay and what they read of others’ comments, but actually go to the source and give Joseph Prince a fair hearing: read his books or listen to his tapes. Put down your guns and set aside the warning label called “antinomian” for the time being, roll the sleeves, and do some honest research."

Without a doubt, Pastor Prince is a charismatic preacher but I challenge anyone to produce evidence of Pastor Prince preaching a sermon which promotes only himself. Every Sunday, we hear Pastor Prince preach only Christ and His finished work on the cross. Of course, not everyone agrees with all that he preaches, and over the years there have been people who left NCC because they could not accept his preaching but looking at how NCC has almost doubled from 10,000 members in 2004 to 19,000 today, it is obvious that many more have come than left. However, my point is not to boast about NCC's church growth but to highlight the fact that NCC's members are FREE to come and go, which certainly is NOT the characteristic of a cult.

About 2 weeks ago, a customer patronised my stall. I chatted with him and discovered that he also attends NCC. He said, "Coming to NCC was the best thing that happened in my life." He is not the only one to feel that way. I also feel the same and hearing the testimonies read in church every Sunday, I know quite a few others from America, Europe and other parts of the world feel the same too. Again, my point is not to boast about NCC but to highlight the fact that for every critic out there who objects to and disapproves of Pastor Prince's preaching, there are many more whose lives have been transformed for the better because their eyes have been opened through his sermons.

Am I asking you to agree with Pastor Prince's preaching? NO! I am asking you to listen to Pastor Prince's sermons and read his books for yourself before you condemn him, NCC and its members!! Don't you dare call NCC a cult without producing any evidence to support your accusation!!!


My reply and that of Geraldine Tan -Wee
Chris Welch The drawback with Pastor Prince is not Pastor Prince.The drawback is that it is like Acts 2 but with only Peter preaching.Now we know he was the first preacher, but he stood up with the other 11 surrounding him, and all of them were used to preach from house to house and probably in ongoing meetings. Pastor Prince as wide as he is on the very key subject of grace, needs the other 11, who have received the other revelations in God's Word. It would be like only feeding on Rob Rufus of Hong Kong or Ern Baxter in the 70s without all the other 70s preachers. Things Pastor Prince does not preach on yet, presumably because he hasn't met them yet, is "the dark night of the soul, and Romans 7 from this perspective, the Total exchange that took place at the Cross, and how we live our lives now Christ as me in my form, with my personality. He has that joy to come!!!
Today at 11:03 · Chris Welch But he is not a cultleader!
Today at 11:05 · Chris Welch For more light on all this read Jack Fortenberry's new book "Corinthian Elders". See my blog or Amazon
Today at 11:07 · Geraldine Tan-Wee The thing is this- the Holy Spirit teaches all things. PP(Pastor Prince, she means.Call no man father...or anything else for that matter! Receive them for their gift , yes, but the fruit is not your lips, it is actually hearing, understanding, and doing what they bring that you become a Living letter describing what they were bringing - then move onACW) does not have exclusive insight because the same teacher that teaches Him, teaches us. That said, some people have greater discernment than others. We all have the same source of wisdom, but not every one taps into it.

IMHO Why PP is a good pastor is because he boldly preaches grace without letting the naysayers faze him. And I am glad that he has a group of very good pastors (after 37 years of this stuff, this is a very chilling phrase indeed ACW)that also provide very interesting insight into the Word. Because most the sermons from our church that is shown overseas is that of our senior Pastor (just as Hillsong's is Brian Houston, CHC's is Kong Hee and Lakewood's is Joel Osteen, etc.) you have not met our other anointed pastors- Ps Matthews, Ps Gabriel, Ps Mark, Ps Lian, Ps Keith, Ps Christina, Ps Lawrence, Ps Benjamin, Ps Daniel, Ps Barnabas Kim, Ps Henry, Ps Darren, Ps Wee Soo Teck, Ps Joshua, .... hey! What do you know? That's more than 11 other pastors that share the pulpit and help lead the church along with him! =)

What is good is that he doesn't just feed the church members, he teaches them how to study the bible (and the writings of other grace based writers) in the right context. Most NCC-ers are able to discern the Word and study the Word in depth because sermons in NCC do go into the original Hebrew and Greek of the Word, as well as touch on biblical symbols and types. ... See more

And yes he is NOT a cult leader. I can still make my mind up about everything in my life. A cult leader won't allow that. =)

Today at 11:30 · ReportChris Welch It is very good that you write and make clear what is not clear to external televised audiences. Thankyou. I feel strongly the Holy Spirit is not letting your church off the hook though and I have tried to put it down in a long post here. Please understand I am not into destructive criticism.What the Holy Spirit is always doing is Yea and Amen ... ...Ever since the the 70s in our home town revival here in 72, followed by reading about Mel Tari, then subsequent meetings in London...I see the continuation of another order entirely emerging.
http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2010/02/order-of-hoy-spirit.html
17 minutes ago ·

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