PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Or DECLARATION OF WAR Or BLESSED ARE THE "PEACEMAKERS"
"Curses On The Enemy"
A friend of mine quotes it this way, "Be as wise as a serpent, and as harmless..." (smile).
Another like it, and perhaps more familiar, "Do unto others, before they get a chance to do it to you."
Or still another, "Do good to your brother, (Do him real good)!
" The Bible's Old Testament comes to a solemn close with the word "curse" and the threat of one. (Let the reader beware!) "Behold, I will send you the spirit of Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord;" "And He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I will come and smite the earth with a curse." Malachi 4:5 & 6.
We once a part of a group of churches that began to do just the opposite, and they have been cursed by the Lord ever since. Then they began to have other problems too, such as immorality, man worship, drunkenness, exclusivity, arrogance, isolationism, cannibalism, unteachableness, anyone of which could bring the wrath of God. In fact, the judgement has already begun. When the Christ within us was no longer received, God led us on. Remember when Christ sent out the twelve and the seventy, two by two? He gave them explicit instructions that when their ministry was no longer received that they should go on down the road to where it would be received. We suggest that you do the same, (unless the problem lies with you, in which case maybe you should go anyway. God can dump it on you better when there's no umbrella). Jesus also indicated that the rejectors of His "sent ones" would be severely the losers, and that it would be credited to their account as having been done to Christ. Remember, IT IS ACCREDITED TO OUR ACCOUNT AS HAVING BEEN DONE TO CHRIST, THE WAY WE RELATE TO EVEN THE LEAST OF THOSE WHO ARE DOING THE WILL OF GOD and it becomes accredited to the account of others, as having been done to Christ, the way they relate to us when we are doing the will of God.
When the Lord talks about, "Blessed are the peacemakers", He is not talking about a six-gun! (Though He did say "Sell your cloak and buy a sword." Don't ask me what that means.)
MINISTRIES OF UNITY
God has given to the Church a special task force of ministries that are especially qualified to help bring unity to the Body of Christ, although all of us are called to be peace makers. These ministries are called "foundational ministries". Eph.2:20, "You are built upon the FOUNDATION OF THE APOSTLES AND PROPHETS, Jesus Christ Himself being the Chief Corner Stone!" If, in a average gathering of Christians, (the born-again ones are the only kind there is), you ask the question, "Who is the foundation of the Church?" Less than one out of ten thousand Christians will answer that the apostles and prophets are to be the foundation of the Church!!! No wonder so many churches are built upon the wrong foundation!
Note this Scripture and see who and what we mean: "God has given, (is giving, and will continue to give -Greek arorist tense) some to be apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists and some as pastors and some as teachers...UNTIL WE ALL BECOME ONE in the faith."Ephesians4:11,& 13a. God's Church has failed to get God's results because we have failed to follow God's formula.
WAR
We invite you to declare war against hatred and disunity in the Body of Christ. But what do we mean by "Declaration of War"? Let me explain. The Bible clearly indicates that we are to keep a right spirit at all times, but it also states that we are to "Be angry, and sin not"! What this means is that we are commissioned to have a white hot righteous anger as a deep motivation, even the zeal and indignation of the Lord Himself against all of the sin that opposes Him and His Kingdom.
Imagine that you are sitting in a restaurant with your family and a bully comes to your table and begins pulling your wife’s hair. What would you do? It is clear that if you personally are attacked that you are to “turn the other cheek” and “go the second mile” and “Rejoice , when folks say all manner of evil against us falsely” for the Lord’s sake. But notice something! It NEVER states that if I am standing by and a person comes up to my brother or sister, and smites him or her on the one cheek that I must turn MY other. It also does not prohibit me from stepping in between the two parties and act as a peacemaker. In fact, I firmly believe that if my brother or sister is being brutalized, murdered, mobbed, mugged, maimed, molested, dismembered or massacred in our presence that we must NOT stand weakly meekly sweetly by and allow it to continue. The thought of this is unthinkable and wrong in the eyes of God and should be wrong in ours! But there have been too many soft-bellied-weak-kneed sissies in the body of Christ that have allowed this kind of thing to happen too many times! If it was not my fault that someone hit my brother or sister the first time, it sure as heaven is true that I am guilty if a second blow was landed!!! For I stand by and allow my sister or brother to be brutalized in my presence, then I am as was Saul at the stoning of Stephen; and so are you!
The Scriptures say that "If your brother offends and you, GO TO HIM"! (Matt.18:5), and "Rebuke not an elder but GO TO HIM"! (I Tim.5: 1). But no place in the Scriptures does it ever say that we are to first go to someone else about him. Therefore, I have personally declared a holy war against the unbridled cannibalization of my sister and brother in my presence. I have to invite you to do the same.
"POTSHOTS AT IMPORTANT PEOPLE or "ROAST PREACHER FOR SUNDAY DINNER"
Have you ever heard the expression "Having Roast Preacher for Sunday Dinner"? As we said in another place, many parents gossip and back bite their pastor at Sunday's dinner in front of their children, and then wonder why their children have no respect for the people and things of God when they get older. (Not to excuse disrespect.) Have you seen that the basis much criticism is jealousy?
KENNETH HAGIN
Let me give you an example: I was in a church situation one Lord's Day when the pastor and others began making some snide negative, sarcastic remarks about Kenneth Hagin. So I raised my hand and gently asked the question, "How many of you here, that have a disagreement with Brother Hagin, have ever tried to call him, or write him or send him a tape or otherwise contact him, about your criticism?" As you might expect, NOT ONE OF THEM HAD!!! So I quietly explained that first of all the Scriptures make it quite plain that we have absolutely no right to stab or bite our brother's back until we have first gone to him with the problem. God and His Bible say, "Go to him!" NOT "Go to some busy body else and back bite about him." (Matt.18:15; I Tim.5:l).
I then went on to explain to the group how that one time Brother Hagin had done something that offended me, that I disagreed with and that I didn't like. But rather than to grump and groan and chicken around behind to bite his back, I sent him a letter. Now Brother Hagin must get a lot of letters from a lot of people, and furthermore, he doesn't know me from Adam last, so I could hardly expect a reply, but a short while later, along came a personal letter from Brother Kenneth Hagin. In his letter to me, he had taken the time to answer, and in it, he humbled himself and apologized to me and asked me to forgive him. I had refused to gossip against him in the first place and I was proud of him in the second place and publicly applaud his humility in the third place. Can you agree?
Now in the above paragraph, I used the phrase "chicken around behind to bite his back". On the Iowa farm we raised chickens. When one would develop a problem with a sore, the other chickens would pick 'n peck on it until they had literally pickpecked that poor chicken to death! That's why I say that it's really really chicken to back bite on our brother (or sister) unless first we have gone to them in love. I say it's "chicken"! God says it is "SIN"! Remember when we said earlier that you don't need to put a lid on a bucket of crabs, because when one of them starts to make a little progress toward freedom, the rest of the crabs pull him (or her) down. I believe we have some "crabs" in the Body of Christ. Are you one of them?
DAVID WILKERSON
I was at a meeting where David Wilkerson spoke at the Jesus' People Church in 1982 where I thought he was too critical. But a short time later came his newsletter where he was humbling himself to the body of Christ at large and asking for rebukes, corrections, criticisms and feedback from any and all who would write to him, and he promised to earnestly pray about what was sent. Then, in his next letter, he told about how God had really spoken to him through these letters and that he had deeply repented of many things on his face before God, and further, was asking for the prayers and forgiveness of everyone. As near as I can tell, that repentance has been real, and lasting. Of course he has the mantle of a moderm day prophet of God who is calling the people to repentance; but, like the old time prophets of God, he is learning to identify himself with the sins of the people as one of them, being one with them, interceding for them. Amen! Besides, Prophets are to be loving and sweet.
SANCTIFIED CRITICISM
Would you believe that there is a place for criticism in the body of Christ and the Kingdom of God? There is!
Bible says, "Rebuke not an elder but GO TO HIM,(NOT SOMEONE ELSE!) and plead with him as a son to a father"! I Tim.5: 1. Some people think that the sentence, the verse, the chapter, the book & the Bible closes right after the phrase, "Rebuke not an elder...." I believe that in the original text there was not even a comma!
Bible says that after we have removed the beam or log out of our own eye, that THEN we are to GO TO OUR BROTHER, (NOT SOMEBODY ELSE!) and remove the lint or the splinter out of our brother's (or sister's) eye. Matthew 7:1-5 & Lk.6:42.
OTHER MINISTRIES - A DEEP NEED
An oft' recurring problem pattern in the body of Christ seems to run something like this: A man or woman attains a place of influence in a ministry. At first, in the early days, they tend to be more teachable, more approachable, more easily intreatable. I remember when I was about twenty years old, I was putting in a concrete driveway for a minister who had retired. I remember asking him this question, "Sir," I said, "If you were to give to me, a young man just starting out in the ministry, any one piece of advice, what would it be?" We had been visiting along while I was working. After thinking about my question a few moments, he said quietly, to this effect, "My young friend, if I were to give you one piece of advice, it would be this, 'ALWAYS REMAIN AS TEACHABLE AS YOU ARE RIGHT NOW!' " (I asked our friend evangelist-prophet Leonard Ravenhill one time in our home the same question. He said, "Always, above all things-be a worshipper!") But as to this thing of being teachable or approachable, the problem is that when a ministry becomes "successful" or "influential" or "widely known and respected" or gets a "large following" or a "large budget" with a "large staff” that they tend to start believing their own publicity and, like many "successful" people begin developing a "god complex"! For example, many lawyers and doctors, social workers, policeman and other ministries forget that they are the "servants of the people" and get to thinking that the people are their servants, instead. How sad!
A FRIEND NAMED JOHN
Once upon a time, I had a friend named John, for example, who started out beautifully, and years ago wonderfully influenced men like Larry Christiansen, Bob Mumford, Jack Winter and Ted Hegre. The group of over 100 flourishing churches became hideously cultic after having been beautiful before God! They got off track for some of the following reasons:
1)They never really had a revelation of "The King's Greatest Secret"!
2)Consequently, they didn't have faith for constant victory in the first place, nor did they genuinely repent, but excused themselves in the second place, because they felt that they "couldn't help themselves" for "after all, they were only human".
3) This Augustinian dualism, Greek manic heist mentality resulted in a "greasy grace" and "sloppy agape" pendulum swing away from legalismand a fear of being religious (as opposed to being I spiritual). People were accused of being religious or legalistic if they didn't drink, etc.
4) This resulted in problems of immorality and drunkenness, profanity and irreverence. In their fear of being religious, they became irreligious and sacrilegious.
5) They became exclusivistic, thinking that they had a corner on God, and that others in the Body of Christ were wrong, so this group isolated themselves against flowing with what God was doing in the Body of Christ at large.
6) They placed too much emphasis on one man, and the words he spoke, and thus got off into "man-worship". They became overly submissive to man and ministry, and failed to be submissive to God.
But couldn't all this have been avoided? Of course! If only the leadership could have been humble and teachable!
This leader got into desperate straights spiritually and other ways largely because he became increasingly unreceptive to wise counsel from "subordinate" channels of the Lord's Word. God would raise up Nathan-prophet-like ministries to be able to say "Thou art the man!" In fact, there is a long list of ministries that through the years tried to give him corrective suggestions, but who were systematically discredited, rejected, isolated, restricted, sued, lied about, and prayed against, (we have heard that he even had a prayer- "hit" list) cannibalistically by means of psychic intimidation and "Christian" witchcraft! Now, we have heard that he died slowly from cancer. Like David, we say, "How are the mighty fallen!" and "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Instead of morbidly wondering who he was, please note this fact. God has obligated himself by His own nature and promise to "resist the proud". (James 4:6 & I Peter 5:5) We obligate God to resist us when we become unteachable and arrogant. There are many, many ministries in the body of Christ today who are similarly unteachable! Would you like to know who they are?
HOW TO TELL THE GUILTY GUYS
All one has to do in order to tell if a ministry is uncorrectable is--CORRECT HIM!!! Then watch his reaction. Don't rebuke him, but "GO TO HIM, AND PLEAD WITH HIM AS A SON TO A FATHER" Does he (or she) stay sweet in their spirit? Bible says, "Correct a wise man and he will love you."! Proverbs 9:8. If your spiritual leader will not listen to wise counsel from the Christ through a subordinate channel, then we recommend that prayer be made that the leadership become teachable, and if the leadership still refuses to be teachable, approachable, etc. then we respectfully recommend that you ask the Lord to give you shepherds after His own heart. The quickest way to open up the door to deception from the enemy is to be unteachable or uncorrectable in your spirit or to follow someone else who is unteachable or uncorrectable. We teach the dear ones that "ONE MUST KEEP A RIGHT SPIRIT EVEN IF THE WRONG PERSON COMES TO HIM AT THE WRONG TIME WITH A WRONG SPIRIT, SHARING WRONG INFORMATION IN A WRONG MANNER, AND EVEN REACH INTO GOD TO BENEFIT FROM THE EXPERIENCE!!!"
I remember back in the olden days at Bible school at Bethany Fellowship. It was the first time I ever "prophesied". I was so timid, (believe it or not)! It took a long time to work up enough courage to "do a prophecy". Finally, I took a breath and "did a prophecy"! Oh, it was short, and probably wasn't much, but it was my "loaves and fishes" sure enough, and afterwards, I felt so glad that I had "obeyed the Lord". But guess what? Sure enough, after the meeting, an upperc1ass student took me aside out in the hallway and with solemn look and somber tone, said something like this: "John, I just wanted you to know that your prophecy was of the "flesh" and there was an awful lot of John Bowlunball (of course there was!) in that prophecy you did, an' uh a person needs to be mighty careful when he does a prophecy, 'cause you could git off track 'n things like that." I smiled at him and said, "Thank you David," and immediately I sought a place of prayer where I could talk things over with the Lord. I explained the situation to the Lord, (as if He wasn't up-to-date on the situation). Then it seemed like the Lord said to me, "Son, you're doing just fine! Be encouraged! Keep on keeping on! I love you and I will continue to lead you by My Spirit" But, if I had become defensive, or withdrawn, or fearful, or self pitying, I would have missed the reassuring voice of the Lord to me. Instead, I actually ended up being strengthened in the thing about which I had received criticism!!!
BALAAM'S ASS
Remember in Numbers 22 of the Bible how God spoke to the prophet Balaam, through his donkey?!. Isaiah 11:6 says, "A little child shall lead them." Ephesians 5 :21 starts out the section on husbands and wives by saying that they are to be submissive TO EACH OTHER in the fear of God, which means to me that there are times when the husband will be submissive to his wife! "Sarah called Abraham 'lord'." But do you fellows remember when God told Abraham, "Do as she says!" or did you guys forget about that one? Genesis 21:12.
Sometimes God will speak to you through a woman, a child a donkey, or perhaps even a man. And when He does speak, then we had better listen, and we had better hear, and we had better obey!!! God grant all of us that we always have a godly fear and trembling, lest we fail to hear or rightly relate to the Christ in the very least of the dear ones who are doing the will of God. God grant that we rightly relate to the Christ WHEREVER He is found, and THROUGH WHOM EVER HE SPEAKS!!! In Jesus' Holy Name. AMEN!
Dear Heavenly Father, please grant I always rightly relate to You, wherever You are found and through whomever You chose to speak Please grant that we never wrongly relate to You, by wrongly relating to the least of these who do Your will In Jesus Name, Amen.
Chapter 10-Review
1. What curse does the Old Testament close with?
2. If people refuse to accept the ministry of Christ through you, what should you do?
3. Complete this Kingdom Principle: IT IS ACCREDITED TO OUR ACCOUNT AS HAVING BEEN DONE TO CHRIST. !
4. What do we mean "declare holy war" against I cannibalism?
5.What do chickens do when one of their fellow I members have a problem sore?
6. What is meant by a "god complex"?
7. What is one of the best ways to find out if a person is correctable?
8. If your spiritual leader persists in his unteachableness, what should you do?
9. Use the word "wrong" at least 5 times in completing the Kingdom Principle: "One must keep a right spirit, at all times, even if ________________________.
10. What Scripture precedes the verse in Ephesians 5 which tells the wife to be submissive to the husband as to the Lord?
11. Complete this thought: "God grant that we always be submissive to and rightly relate to the Christ, wherever _____________________________.