Pastor John,

I enjoyed this evening’s meeting very much. I want to share what I learned and understood, from the things you were teaching us.

(1) No one chooses the truth of God – everyone chooses the desire of their heart….everyone. It is up to God whether that desire is godly, or not; in ourselves, we are powerless to desire the things of God – and powerless NOT to desire the lusts of our own heart.

Men are traveling in every conceivable spiritual direction, following their heart and claiming it to be the right way. It is up to Jesus to decide who desires what is truly holy in God’s sight.

It is just as your father said many years ago, pastor John: “Everything you believe could be a lie….for all you know!” Preacher Clark was telling us: Everyman is right in his own eyes. We are at the mercy of God as to whether our “right” leads us to God’s righteousness.

We are powerless to desire holiness, for that is the heart of God. Who can know or conceive of such a thing so high above man, without the Creator of man leading? But we do have a part to play as we depend on God’s mercy. Our part is to walk humbly before the Lord, to hate evil, and turn from every sin, to love the household of faith, to prefer the unity of the body of Christ above our own selves, and to treat every man on earth like he may one day be converted by the Lord and be our brother in Christ. He just may be – one day – no matter his condition today.

(2) Keep our garden free from weeds. In other words – keep the spiritual no-harms (those things that do not minister to the Lord, nor edify the body of Christ) out of our life while they are still in their infancy, and before they grow up and become hard to dismantle. It is easy to manage a weed when it first sprouts, easy to see in an otherwise clean garden, and easy to pull up because there is no root to fight against. Don’t let a weed grow a root in your holy garden, and it will pull up as fast as you can pinch it between your fingers.

(3) Jesus described Four Kinds of Soil in Mathew 13, one in which the foolish hear the Word of God, but because they have no depth of soul for the Word of God to grow in, once that seed springs up, it cannot grow roots, and when the heat of sun comes up, it is scorched and withers and dies.

The opposite is true for the wise in Christ; their soul provides no depth for weeds to grow in, so that when the seed of a fruitless weed sprouts, it cannot take root. Therefore, when the heat of the Son comes up, that weed is scorched and withers away 🙂 We had some scorching of weeds in last Sunday’s meeting! A lot of good heat from the Son!

(4) The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts…..(Prov. 20:27 KJV). In other words, the Lord tries our spirits with the spirits of the people around us. If a person brings out your worst, the Lord has shined His candle on your worst and is inviting you to seek Him to be rid of it.

The foolish learn to avoid those circumstances which reveal their hidden “worst,” while the wise seek out the Lord’s candle to reveal it, to get free of it before the coming judgment of the Lord.

Amen, amen and amen!

Loved tonight’s meeting, pastor John! Thank you!

Jerry

I read your gospel tract, “What Is Salvation?” Very good teaching. So hard in this day to convince people to live holy.

David H.

=========

Hi, David.

The “get saved” madness that took root in the early 20th century has now swept multitudes of believers off their feet and carried them away. It is one of the strongest “winds of doctrine” ever to have blown through the vineyard of God. In 1925, my father was a student at the Ayden Seminary in Ayden, NC. One day a visiting speaker from California addressed the students there and made a strange claim. The following is an excerpt from a biography I wrote about my father,

George Clarence Clark, Sr.:

To Ayden, Then To God

In the fall of 1925, twenty-three-year-old George Clarence Clark entered the Free Will Baptist Seminary in Ayden, North Carolina. Having only a surface knowledge of religion, he had assumed that the professors of the Bible would agree concerning the Bible’s teachings. He had not been in Ayden Seminary long before he learned that there were deep disagreements among the professors concerning key Biblical doctrines, including the foundational doctrine of salvation. One camp taught that those who believe in Jesus will be saved in the end regardless of their deeds in this life, while another group taught that obedience to the will of God is the way to salvation and that without obedience, no one will be saved, including born-again people. He was confused. Who was right?

The early twentieth century was a pivotal time in history for the saints in America. The non-Biblical concept of “getting saved”, now commonly taught and accepted among believers, was just beginning to take root. Clarence had grown up as a Free Will Baptist, and he had never heard the phrase, “getting saved”. Among the vast majority of Christians of the time, conversion was called conversion, or “born again”, but never “getting saved”. The first time Clarence ever heard of someone “getting saved” was during a lecture at the Seminary by a visiting speaker from California. When the speaker claimed that he had “gotten saved”, Clarence turned to his fellow seminarian and good friend, a young man from Florida named I. J. Blackwelder, and asked, “Blackwelder, what’s he talking about when he says that he ‘got saved’?”

Blackwelder replied, “I don’t know, but I think he means ‘converted’.”

Clarence and Blackwelder decided they should do their own study of the Scriptures and see about this new phrase, “getting saved”. They went to the seminary library, did their research, and concluded that the guest speaker was in error. There was no such phrase in the Bible. “Conversion”, they learned, is not a synonym for “salvation”. Conversion is, as they had always heard, an experience to be had now in this life, and salvation is the promised reward to be given to the converted (if they are faithful to Jesus) when the Lord returns. They shrugged off the lecturer’s strange doctrine of “getting saved” and returned to their seminary studies. Neither of them expected that the new doctrine of sinners “getting saved” when they repent would become standard doctrine among evangelicals in their lifetime. At the beginning of the twentieth century; it was not the normal confession of believers. By the end of the twentieth century, “getting saved” had become the very heart of the gospel for many millions of Christians around the world.

I tell the folk here that the “get saved” madness has become so big that the best we can do is simply to live a holy life in the fear of God, as Jesus said for us to do, as examples for whoever is searching for what is truly right.

Thank you for writing, and may God bless you and those there with you. Please stay in touch, as you feel led to do so.

Your servant in Christ,

John

PS You can find most of the things I have written at www.GoingtoJesus.com

Hey John,

Home safe and sound. Sounder actually! Praise God!!

I wanted to tell you what your words did for me. At the airport you said the meetings were about praising him. Lifting Him up and praising Him. Just that! It set my thinking straight about meetings. I love them, but they had become a time where I went to get fed primarily, to stay in touch with family, to enjoy the music. When I stepped out of that selfish thinking, and really just made it about Him, it felt different! The message for some time now was “It’s not about you!”, and this weekend “Check your problems at the door”. I love that! When I was encumbered with the “weight of the world” I wasn’t able to put Him first and just praise Him. What an experience to be there just for Him! He let me praise Him and I’m so grateful. Grateful for right thinking.

I love to be around God’s people. To see how we are supposed to praise Him, to learn how to love each other and to observe how to live right. God blessed me by putting me in this family!

Thanks for all you do John!

Patty

============

Wonderful testimony, Patty! It was good to see so many people, including you, be so blessed this past weekend! Praise ye the Lord!

Pastor John

Pastor John,

When I got home this evening, I asked the Lord to help me better understand what it is that I had felt and heard during tonight’s meeting. Inside, I felt as if I had been knocked off my feet and I couldn’t think about anything else once that happened.

I would like to tell about it.

You were describing for us a scene from the book of Acts and explaining what it is that God’s people were doing during that moment recorded in the book of Acts, when the spirit of God said among those assembled believers, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.”

You were telling us that those believers were ministering to the Lord when that happened (Acts 13:2). They were serving the Lord – serving him something other than their complaints and their problems. You said they were ministering to him thankfulness and praise, when he showed up and spoke to them.

It was during this time tonight that I heard the Spirit very clearly interrupt my thoughts and ask:
“What are the Body’s problems? What blessings has the Body received?
Praise me as one body instead of one person and that’s when you’ll be heard.”

The feelings that came with that pastor John were more than I am able to communicate. But in an instant I could feel that we are all one creation, one life, not many separate lives in God’s sight.

I also saw that there was such a thing as offering praise to God from one Life, instead of a room full of many lives. For just a brief moment tonight, my heart got a glimpse of ‘unity’ that I did not know I was unaware of. It is beyond my ability to think on or explain, but I felt it, and my heart saw it.

When I got home, I asked the Lord to help me understand what I had experienced, and this is what I heard back:

“Start living for one Body instead of one person.”

Jerry

Pastor John,

I want to share what the Lord helped me to understand today.

I was bagging up winter work clothes, getting things ready for warmer weather when I found myself standing in front of the mirror in our back bedroom. I paused there for a moment to look at myself, and as I did I considered, for the first time that I can ever recall, why it is that I was wearing clothing. I know the story of Adam and Eve, but it wasn’t until that moment in front of the mirror that I realized what my clothing meant. My clothing meant that mankind determined at a point in history that it was unacceptable to be seen in the skin that God had lovingly made for him, and that it needed to be covered up! I marveled at this. I thought “Lord, what other creature on Earth feels modest about the skin that you gave him? A chicken doesn’t seek out a covering for its body, nor does a fish or a cat or a dog.”

I just marveled at the fact that we feel the need to wear a covering over our skin, because I realized that the feeling of shame for having our skin exposed, and even the very idea that we are exposed or naked without clothing, is contrary to the order being experienced by every other living creature here on Earth. I realized, really realized, something had happened to make us go against that order that all other creatures in God’s creation are in-step with. No other living creature here on Earth, is ashamed to be seen in his skin.

For the rest of the day, and into this evening, I felt God filling in the gaps of my understanding, so that I could better take in what it was that I had seen and felt today.

What I understood today, is what I am hoping to share:

Men didn’t start out feeling the need for clothing, no more than fish do, or chickens, cats, dogs, and so on. Nakedness didn’t exist in the beginning – our skin and its design was good and clean and holy, it was our covering given to us by our loving Father, and there was no other way to think about it.

Man didn’t begin to feel the need to cover his body, until he started having wrong feelings and thoughts about his/her body. When man partook of the tree of good and evil, it allowed him to experience wrong thoughts, feelings, and ideas about everything, including the holy purpose for his wonderful body. Adam and Eve no longer saw their bodies as only perfect gifts crafted in love for them by their Father and Creator.
Their newfound and ungodly “knowledge,” caused them to see their bodies in a different light, and they covered themselves for it. By covering their bodies, they were trying to cover their new and ungodly feelings. Unable to cover their ungodly desires, they instead covered the objects of their desire.

Man has been doing that ever since.

Men lock away their money because they know men are incapable of locking away their desire to steal. Men cover their bodies because they can’t cover the ungodly lusts in their hearts.

All laws and rules manufactured by men on the Earth, are a testimony to the things that he cannot rule over in his own heart.

Every rule devised by, or that is out of necessity imposed by man is a testimony that we need Jesus. Every statute in the law library of Congress is a confession to the endless number of things that we need Jesus to wash us from.

These thoughts gave me a renewed love and pity for human beings, pastor John. And a new and appropriate reverence for those who make as well as those who desire law- the carnal law of men, over chaos.

The law of man, albeit a muzzle, is still God’s influence on this Earth, and it is a blessing and holds hope for people. The laws that men continue to impose upon themselves represent a confession that he still knows and desires to do good, yet without the power to do so.

God help all of us!

Help us to repent and do it your way.

Jerry

===========

Hi Jerry.

God made the first coverings for man when he realized he was naked, to help man deal with the shame he had begun to feel (Gen. 3:21). He is a good God. But I wonder if there is more to the story than what you are saying, for the Bible mentions the apparel of heavenly beings, including God Himself, as well as the apparel of humans.

When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they acquired knowledge, and that knowledge included an awareness that they were, in fact, naked. That knowledge made Adam and Eve realize they were superior to animals and, unlike animals, should be wearing clothes, just as God and angels do. That is one of the ways that man became “like gods”, able “to know good and evil” (Gen. 3:5, 22).

So, becoming aware of the appropriateness of being covered appears to have been part of the knowledge of good that Adam acquired, not part of the evil knowledge that became his.

Before closing, let me also point out that Jesus recommended (figurative) clothing for a wayward pastor in Revelation (Rev. 3:17-18), and throughout the Bible, spiritual nakedness is an indication of evildoing. The clothing that godly people wear is, according to what was revealed to John, “the righteousness of saints” (Rev. 19:18).

Pastor John