Picture of a Prophet

Picture of a Prophet

By Leonard Ravenhill

The prophet in his day is fully accepted of God and totally rejected by men.

Years back, Dr. Gregory Mantle was right when he said, "No man can be fully accepted until he is totally rejected." The prophet of the Lord is aware of both these experiences. They are his "brand name."

The group, challenged by the prophet because they are smug and comfortably insulated from a perishing world in their warm but untested theology, is not likely to vote him "Man of the year" when he refers to them as habituates of the synagogue of Satan!

The prophet comes to set up that which is upset. His work is to call into line those who are out of line! He is unpopular because he opposes the popular in morality and spirituality. In a day of faceless politicians and voiceless preachers, there is not a more urgent national need than that we cry to God for a prophet! The function of the prophet, as Austin-Sparks once said, "has almost always been that of recovery."

The prophet is God's detective seeking for a lost treasure. The degree of his effectiveness is determined by his measure of unpopularity. Compromise is not known to him.

He has no price tags. He is totally "otherworldly."
He is unquestionably controversial and unpardonably hostile.
He marches to another drummer!

He breathes the rarefied air of inspiration. He is a "seer" who comes to lead the blind. He lives in the heights of God and comes into the valley with a "thus saith the Lord."

He shares some of the foreknowledge of God and so is aware of
impending judgment. He lives in "splendid isolation."

He is forthright and outright, but he claims no birthright.
His message is "repent, be reconciled to God or else...!"
His prophecies are parried.

His truth brings torment, but his voice is never void.
He is the villain of today and the hero of tomorrow.
He is excommunicated while alive and exalted when dead!
He is dishonored with epithets when breathing and honored with
epitaphs when dead.

He is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, but few "make the grade" in his class. He is friendless while living and famous when dead.
He is against the establishment in ministry; then he is established as a saint by posterity.

He eats daily the bread of affliction while he ministers, but he feeds the Bread of Life to those who listen.

He walks before men for days but has walked before God for years.
He is a scourge to the nation before he is scourged by the nation.
He announces, pronounces, and denounces!

He has a heart like a volcano and his words are as fire.
He talks to men about God.

He carries the lamp of truth amongst heretics while he is lampooned by men. He faces God before he faces men, but he is self-effacing.

He hides with God in the secret place, but he has nothing to hide in
the marketplace.

He is naturally sensitive but supernaturally spiritual.
He has passion, purpose and pugnacity.
He is ordained of God but disdained by men.

Our national need at this hour is not that the dollar recovers its strength, or that we save face over the Watergate affair, or that we find the answer to the ecology problem. We need a God-sent prophet!

I am bombarded with talk or letters about the coming shortages in our national life: bread, fuel, energy. I read between the lines from people not practiced in scaring folk. They feel that the "seven years of plenty" are over for us. The "seven years of famine" are ahead. But the greatest famine of all in this nation at this given moment is a FAMINE OF THE HEARING OF THE WORDS OF GOD (Amos 8:11).

Millions have been spent on evangelism in the last twenty-five years. Hundreds of gospel messages streak through the air over the nation every day. Crusades have been held; healing meetings have made a vital contribution. "Come-outers" have "come out" and settled, too, without a nation-shaking revival. Organizers we have. Skilled preachers abound. Multi-million dollar Christian organizations straddle the nation. BUT where, oh where, is the prophet? Where are the incandescent men fresh from the holy place? Where is the Moses to plead in fasting before the holiness of the Lord for our moldy morality, our political perfidy, and sour and sick spirituality?

GOD'S MEN ARE IN HIDING UNTIL THE DAY OF THEIR SHOWING FORTH. They will come. The prophet is violated during his ministry, but he is vindicated by history.

There is a terrible vacuum in evangelical Christianity today. The missing person in our ranks is the prophet. The man with a terrible earnestness. The man totally otherworldly. The man rejected by other men, even other good men, because they consider him too austere, too severely committed, too negative and unsociable.

Let him be as plain as John the Baptist.

Let him for a season be a voice crying in the wilderness of modern theology and stagnant "churchianity."

Let him be as selfless as Paul the apostle.
Let him, too, say and live, "This ONE thing I do."

Let him reject ecclesiastical favors.
Let him be self-abasing, nonself-seeking, nonself-projecting, nonself- righteous, nonself-glorying, nonself-promoting.

Let him say nothing that will draw men to himself but only that which will move men to God.

Let him come daily from the throne room of a holy God, the place where he has received the order of the day. Let him, under God; unstop the ears of the millions who are deaf through the clatter of shekels milked from this hour of material mesmerism.

Let him cry with a voice this century has not heard because he has seen a vision no man in this century has seen. God send us this Moses to lead us from the wilderness of crass materialism, where the rattlesnakes of lust bite us and where enlightened men, totally blind spiritually, lead us to an ever-nearing Armageddon.

God have mercy! Send us PROPHETS!

Leonard Ravenhill

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Concerned Christian about a movie against all we as Christians stand for - Corpus Christi. I think we should do all we can to nip this kind of abomination in the bud. Mardon & buck ----- Original Message ----- Subject: Corpus Christi Going beyond disrespect The movie "Corpus Christi" is due to be released this June to August. A disgusting film set to appear in America later this year depicts Jesus and his disciples as homosexuals! As a play, this has already been in theaters for a while. It's called "Corpus Christi" which means "The Body of Christ". It's a revolting mockery of our Lord. But we can make a difference. That's why I am sending this e-mail to you.. If you do send this around, we just might be able to prevent this film from showing in America. Let's stand for what we believe in and stop the mockery of Jesus Christ our Savior. Where do we stand as Christians? At the risk of a bit of inconvenience, I'm forwarding this to all I think would appreciate it, too. Please help us prevent such offenses against our Lord. There is no petition to sign, no time limit, or minimum number of people to send this to.. It will take you less than 2 minutes! If you are not interested and do not have the 2 minutes it will take to do this, please don't complain when God does not have time for you because He is far busier than we are. Hey, it's worth a shot! Apparently, some regions in Europe have already banned the film. All we need is a lot of prayer and a lot of e-mails. JUST GET THE WORD OUT!

Changing the Way We Do Church 7

This last installment in my series Changing the Way We Do Church 7 has been a long time coming. That's not because I didn't know what to write. It's just that I have been up to a lot of other things and one of them is more involvement with my local church, Shepherd’s Fold Community Church, on the Central part of Oklahoma City OK. As I wrote this series, I realized that I needed to be more closely aligned with a local body so that I was not just theorizing, griping or fantasizing, in any way to do harm too but actually contributing to the solution in an active way.

The seventh and last step in the Changing process would be to address and meet the needs of women, ethnic minorities, and children around the world.

A number of years ago, I watched a Sixty Minutes segment on the Taliban and they had done to women in Afghanistan and I cried. A friend of mine asked the Lord that he would go there if He wanted him to. Lo and behold, he was invited there after the Taliban were ousted and he saw for himself the suffering that war imposes on women and children. Over the years, I have heard the same dynamic in Africa and in some parts of Asia. What's more, I still behold the problem here at home.

Jesus was the friend of women, which was a revolutionary concept in Judaism. He and the disciples had a team of women traveling with them (see Luke 8:1-3). Jesus allowed women to appropriately touch Him and they were healed; He did not rebuke them for doing so. Children also had easy access to Jesus, even though the disciples, His ushers, tried to keep the children away.

If Jesus was a magnet for women and children, and Jesus is present in His body, the church, then doesn't it stand to reason that women and children, the neediest groups due to male mismanagement and irresponsibility, should also flock to the Church? What's more, should not the Church proactively address the needs of these two important groups?

I also mention ethnic groups because the church should always be a place where people who don't look like one another gather. That's why I don't care for churches that have all or only one group, whether they are all Chinese, Korean, Messianic believers, Spanish or Mexican Americans, Africans or African-Americans. Church should look like heaven is going to look and that is best described in Revelation 7:9: - After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.

I am addressing that wrong thinking and I believe churches have that problem, too. We will pay the electric company whatever they say we owe them, but won't sometimes spend $100 on the poor or widows. That has to change.

There you have my seven steps to changing the way we do church. Feel free to write me your comments, even if you disagree. Let me hear from you as to what changes you think need to take place for the Body to be a place of mission and purpose and not just a place of assembly once or twice a week

A note to thank all those who have similar feelings on the church and how we need to change from the different Blogs and studies I have used in this effort.

Pastor Frank

Oldest Granddaughter and her two children.

A Biblical Study of Stewardship
An Executive Summary – Dr. James E Taylor & Franklin M Porter Sr.

Introduction
The lack of biblical stewardship has reached a crisis level in America. At the root of this crisis is a lack of discipleship which calls us to revisit the meaning of biblical stewardship. If we are to accomplish our God-given vision to be a "movement of Great Commission Christians who are glorifying God by building Christ's Church worldwide," we must relearn the scriptural principles that guide earning, spending, saving and giving.
Jesus declared in Mark 1:15, the kingdom of God is within your reach. God's rule and reign is available to all who will receive it. Responding to His call requires a radical change-we serve a new Master, and everything we have belongs to Him (Psalm 24:1) Truly, if God owns our hearts, He will most certainly have our "wallets" as well. Therefore, any discussion of stewardship must begin with a healthy understanding of the Kingdom of God. The general concept of stewardship is not limited to matters of money or finances. Biblical stewardship encompasses far more; it means coming fully under the reign of God in every area of our lives.

Stewardship Defined
In short, a steward is a person who takes care of someone else's property. The Old Testament concept of stewardship begins and ends with God. God is creator and owner of all things. In Genesis when God gave Adam and Eve dominion over creation, He told them to rule on His behalf. Our stewardship in the Kingdom of God was established from the beginning. When the Israelites were poised to enter the Promised Land they were reminded that the land belonged to God and that they were at best temporary tenants. The principles of God's ownership and our stewardship are foundational to all of the laws regarding land and possessions.
The concept in the Old Testament teaching on stewardship May be summarized as:( 1) God owns everything. 2) God's covenant people are responsible for their management of God's resources. 3) Giving is a worshipful response to God's ownership of all things.
The concept of stewardship is continued through some of the parables of Jesus and the teaching of the Apostles. Jesus calls us to become wise and faithful stewards-responsible for and accountable for both material and spiritual things-handling money, life, gifts, our churches and the gospel message according to God's purposes.

Seven principles of stewardship provided in the New Testament give a framework for a Christian lifestyle of stewardship.

a. Good Stewardship Begins with the Recognition just as the Old Testament that God is the Owner of All Things (1 Chronicles 29:1-4, Luke 12:42-48, Luke 16:1-13, Matthew 25:14-20, Luke 19:12-27) We cannot "give" God ownership of our material goods. He already owns it all. We can only recognize and submit to His ownership.

b. As Stewards, We are Entrusted with Goods to Care for as Part of Kingdom Discipleship Until the Return of the Master Jesus Christ (Mathew 25:15, Luke 19:23, Mathew 25:27, Luke 12:42) God is mainly concerned with our faithfulness of what He entrusts to our care. We can trust that God in His providence puts into our hands only what we can aptly handle and that He expects us to bear fruit in His Kingdom.

c. Earthly Resources Can be Used for Eternal Purposes (Luke 16:13-15, Hebrews 6:10) Worldly wealth can have eternal value. We are to view money as a tool that can accomplish eternal work-reaching people for Christ.

d. Our Stewardship Must Serve Not Only Our Own Purposes, but the Purpose of the Master, Jesus Christ (Luke 12:47, Luke 17:7-10) The greatest punishment in the parable of the faithful and unfaithful servants comes to the servant who knew the master's will and did not do it.

e. As Stewards We Need a Balanced Picture of Hardship (Mathew 8:19-22, Mathew 10:22, Mark 10:45) God has often called his people to endure hardship, but a balanced view is necessary. We should resist lifestyle inflation to minimize debt, increase giving, and be ready to support God's call to new ministry.

f. We Will Be Held Accountable for Our Stewardship (2 Corinthians 5:10, Ephesians 2:8,9, Mathew 16:27, 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, Romans 14:12, 1 Corinthians 3:14,15) Our redemption does not remove us from responsibility and accountability before God. It will be an evaluation of both deed and heart.

g. Our Stewardship Embraces Both the Spiritual and the Material (Ephesians 5:15,16, 1 Corinthians 6:19, Hebrews 13:2, 1 Peter 4:9) The use of time and opportunities to minister certainly must be governed with wise stewardship.

Practical Directives on Stewardship
There is no effective difference between ignorance of God's principles and rebellion to those principles. A thorough understanding of four practical directives is needed to address human resistance to stewardship issues.

Spiritual Warfare: Those subject to the spirit of mammon suffer under a satanic lie that man-made things (job, work, luck, and money) are their providers instead of God, the true provider. Christians must be alert and ready to employ the weapons of spiritual warfare in the ordinary world of wage earning, bill paying and giving.

The Health and Wealth Gospel: In reconciling the positive and negative scriptures dealing with wealth, it is our attitude, namely our desire for it, that can make its possession evil (1 Timothy 6:9,10). We reject as unbiblical the suggestion that God has set up universal laws of prosperity, put into action by faith and positive confession. There is equal error in believing God must meet both our needs and desires or that somehow the poor have dishonored God by not being delivered from poverty. We affirm that material poverty is part of the curse of our fallen world and it is never God's pleasure or delight that his children remain in poverty. Our contention is that if the church embraces the reign and rule of God in the management of all its possessions, then it will see, as a by-product of the advancement of the Kingdom, a powerful liberation of God's people.

The Spirit of the Tithe: Although Christians today disagree over the place of the tithe, historically, the tenth, or tithe has always symbolized the whole. The tithe is a token symbol affirming that the whole belongs to God. Viewed this way, the amount or percentage given is not the issue, rather, it is the spirit or the heart behind the gift. In Matthew 23:23, Jesus affirms the tithe, but rebukes the Pharisees for losing the spirit behind it: "You give a tenth of your spices . . . but you have neglected . . . justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former." If in fact the heart is the key issue and if we are merely stewards of what is ultimately owned by God, then the driving question we must ask is not, "How much do I give?" but "How much dare I keep?" To this end, five practical principles apply to the spirit of the tithe:

Give First: the tithe reminds us that God comes first in our lives, that He alone deserves preeminence.

Give Cheerfully: "Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." (1 Corinthians 9:7)

Give Faithfully: faithfulness is the heart of biblical stewardship. Christians should live their lives in a way that will result in the Lord saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:21-23).

Give Wisely: the investment of God's resources must be done with wisdom. It is wise to give first to one's home church, and then to worldwide ministries including those of The Christian and Missionary Alliance.

Give Without Seeking Recognition: "But when you give to the needy [not if], do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" (Matthew 6:3). Such giving not only guards against religious pride, but also is one of the primary ways God builds faith into our lives.

The Stranglehold of Debt: Many believers are unable to obey the clear directives of God on stewardship because they are in bondage to debt. Romans 13:8 says, "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another." The goal here is not to be legalistic or impose guilt but to ask, "Are my finances headed in the direction Scripture is pointing?" Our stewardship teaching must address this problem or it will fail to produce effective disciples of Jesus Christ. It is not God's will for His people to be enslaved by debt but that they should be free in all areas of their lives.

Summary
The Christian must rekindle their passion to become godly stewards-men and women who handle God's resources with integrity. Our Vision to become "a movement of Great Commission Christians who are glorifying God by building Christ's Church will only be realized if we make a wholesale commitment of all we have and all we are to Him. The scripture calls us to be wise and faithful stewards who handle life, money, spiritual gifts, and the gospel message faithfully.

Pastor’s Frank & Esther Porter

Invites you Sunday’s to
A Home Church at our home at 310 Wilson Dr. Midwest City just one block south of S E 15th on Felix then turn east 1/2 Blk.

10:00AM Fellowship / Refreshments
10:30AM Praise & Worship
10:45 Service Starts
11:00 Message by Pastor Frank
Time for Ministry and Fellowship

Healing The Sick, Saving The Lost,
Setting The Captives Free.

Do we receive Jesus as Lord and Savior, or as Savior only?

 

Some say a person who refuses to obey Christ can still receive Him as Savior. They teach that the gift of eternal life is available by faith even to one who rejects the moral and spiritual demands of Christ. They accuse others of teaching "lordship salvation," implying that it is novel to suggest that submission is a characteristic of saving faith.

Until relatively recently, however, no one would have dared suggest a person can be saved while stubbornly refusing to bow to Christ's authority. Nearly all the major biblical passages calling for saving faith refer to Jesus as lord (cf. Acts 2:21, 36; Romans 10:9-10).

Biblically, however, repentance is a total about face — turning away from sin and self and unto God (cf. 1 Thessalonians 1:9). That is no more a result of human effort than faith itself. Nor is it in any sense a pre-salvation work required to prepare a sinner for salvation. Real repentance is inseparable from faith and, like faith, is the work of God in a human heart. It is the response God inevitably generates in the heart of one He is redeeming. 

What is faith? Some say faith is merely believing certain facts. One popular Bible teacher says saving faith is nothing more than confidence in the divine offer of eternal life. 

Biblically, however, the object of faith is not the divine offer; it is the Person of Jesus Christ. Faith in Him is what saves, not just believing His promises or accepting facts about Him. Saving faith has to be more than accepting facts. Even demons have that kind of faith (James 2:19). 

Believing in Jesus means receiving Him for all that He is (John 1:12). It means both confessing Him as Savior and yielding to Him as Lord. In fact, Scripture often uses the word obedience as a synonym for faith (cf. John 3:36; Acts 6:7; Hebrews 5:9). What is a disciple? In the past hundred years or so, it has become popular to speak of discipleship as a higher level of Christian experience. In the new terminology, a person becomes a believer at salvation; he becomes a disciple later, when he moves past faith to obedience. 

Such a view conveniently relegates the difficult demands of Jesus to a post-salvation experience. It maintains that when He challenged the multitudes to deny self, to take up a cross and follow Him (Mark 8:34); to forsake all (Luke 14:33); and to leave father and mother (Matthew 19:29), He was simply asking believers to step up to the second level and become disciples. 

But how does that square with Jesus' own words, "I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matt 9:13)? The heart of His ministry was evangelism, and those difficult demands are evangelistic appeals. 

Every believer is a disciple and vice versa. A careful reading of Acts shows that the word disciple has been a synonym for Christian from the earliest days of the church (cf. 6:1-2, 7; 11:26; 14:20, 22; 15:10). 

What is the evidence of salvation? In their zeal to eliminate good works as a requirement for salvation, some have gone to the extreme of arguing that good works are not even a valid evidence of salvation. They teach that a person may be genuinely saved yet never manifest the fruit of salvation — a changed life. 

A few have even taken the absurd position that a born-again person may ultimately turn away from Christ into unbelief, deny God, and become an atheist — yet still possess eternal life. One writer invented a term for such people: "unbelieving believers"! 

Scripture is clear that a saved person can never be lost. It is equally clear that a genuine Christian will never fall back into total unbelief. That kind of apostasy proves an individual was never really born again (1 John 2:19). 

Furthermore, if a person is genuinely saved, his life will change for the better (2 Corinthians 5:17). He is saved "for good works" (Ephesians 2:10), and there is no way he can fail to bring forth at least some of the fruit that characterizes the redeemed (cf. Matthew 7:17). His desires are transformed; he begins to hate sin and love righteousness. He will not be sinless, but the pattern of his life will be decreasing sin and increasing righteousness. 

You need to settle these critical questions in your own heart. Study the gospel Scripture presents. Listen with discernment to every speaker you hear. Measure everything by the Word of God. Above all, make sure that the message you share with unbelievers is truly the gospel of Christ.