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  • Matthew 28:16-20 “The Great Commission”

    Hi pastor John, 

    What does “great commission” mean in Matthew 28:16-20?

    Thank you,

    Leika

    =========

    Hi Leika.

    There is no “great commission” in Matthew 28:16-20.  That is a phrase Christians invented and applied to those verses to use as a tool of manipulation, to pressure people to donate to their evangelistic enterprises.

    In Matthew 28:16-20, Jesus is only ordaining the ones with him then, the ones to whom he was then speaking – his disciples – to preach and to spread the gospel.  He was not speaking to you.  If Jesus ever tells you or me to go preach and to spread the gospel, then we should go do that, too.  In the meantime, we have no authority to do so, and we are under no obligation to support Christians who claim to have a commission to spread the gospel just because they read those verses in Matthew.

    Only those whom Jesus personally anoints and sends have authority to preach and to spread his gospel.  Now, if Jesus DOES anoint and send a man, that is indeed a “great commission”.  But such a commission belongs only to those whom the living Jesus sends.  No scripture has the power to anoint and send men to preach the gospel of Christ.  “The scripture kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

    Let us pray that Jesus will anoint and send many men to preach his gospel.  It is very much needed.  Whenever he does that, the difference is enormous between those holy men and the Christian missionaries who claim to have a “great commission” to evangelize, based on Matthew 28.

    Thank you for the question, Leika.

    Pastor John

     

  • Wednesday Night

    Pastor John, 

    I’m sitting here considering and enjoying all that we felt Wednesday night, and the wonderful things that we heard.  The message Wednesday was, “The only part that God’s children play, in true religion, is to respond to God.  He acts, and we react – that is all that real religion is; everything else is just man’s ‘good’ idea, an idea that has nothing to do with the holiness of God or the mind of Christ.”

    My, that is a lot!  It encompasses a lot – everything, really!

    To consider how incredible every one of our lives is, every one of us!  To think how God has completely remade every one of us and our circumstances. And then realize that all of that, all of the growing that we have ever done in Christ, all of the changes, all of the building up and the tearing down, all of the rearranging and recreating that has occurred – every bit of it – was just us responding in faith to something that God did first!

    We didn’t do a thing.  We didn’t even “come to Christ”; we don’t know the way!  He bid us to come, and we said yes.

    The truth carries us.  Our only part is to just say yes in faith when He sends us the next choice to make.  We just go left, or we go right when the Spirit bids “turn”.  We have been reacting to the love of God and His intricate management of our lives and circumstances since the day we were born. We didn’t initiate a bit of this, and at no time since that first day have we (successfully) taken off under our own direction toward the Lord, because we still don’t know the way.

    What a testament to the love of God, if we can’t do anything during this entire journey but respond to the Lord, and He constantly gives us guidance to which we can respond!

    This way is like a moving sidewalk.  We don’t walk forward and outrun it; we don’t know where to go.  We stay on the sidewalk, let it carry us, and then turn when God says “choose”.  And we don’t know the way even then, but the Spirit in us does!  And those who do the will of God along the way, they turn the right direction when the choice comes.  “These are the sons of God”, as Paul said, and they will end up at home with Jesus, standing right at God’s front door at the end of this life.

    Wonderful!

    Jerry D.

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

    Pastor John,

    I am so overwhelmed with God’s love right now.  For days, Jesus has been talking to me, drawing near and teaching me.  I love these times with Jesus.  The meeting Wednesday night was so good to me!  It brought such a peace!  “Just respond”  heart  I felt like I could breathe again.  Like everything slowed down and the stillness of Jesus took over.  It has not left me since.

    For some time now Jesus has been talking to Michelle and me with these old prayer meeting CDs.  I wish someone else could see it, just to witness him working.  We do not plan which CD we listen to, or in which order.  The years vary, yet Jesus has so perfectly timed it for us to hear lesson after lesson, in sync. There are lessons about spirits that divide, lessons about hearts and how he made them into what we see today.

    Oh, to have a heart like sister Lou.  A heart that sees a scar on her flesh as what God is doing for her heart.  I want that heart.  It’s beautiful, pastor John.  There are also lessons about you.  It did something in my heart Wed. night, when you spoke of wanting what your father had, as he gave his testimony that night long ago.  It does something to me when Lou says, “We need to know who John Clark is.”  Oh I pray I cherish you.  I pray I value and honor my gift from Jesus. 

    Reading Jerry’s email, and Michelle’s email, and spending so much time with Jesus learning what he has done to each heart, each child, to get them ready to come home, lets me feel that holy anchor even more.  We have a beautiful family history that Jesus has so intimately loved and formed.  I am so in love with his love for us!

    I love you Pastor John

    Beth

     

     

     

  • In Awe!

    Pastor John, 

    I was reading in Mark tonight.  I was really touched by the love and compassion Jesus had for the people. 

    I read about blind Bartimaeus and how, when he heard Jesus pass by, he cried out, “O son of David! Jesus!  Have mercy on me.”  And at first the people tried to quiet him but he just cried out louder!  “Oh son of David have mercy on me!” 

    Then Jesus called for him!  And his disciples said, “Be of good cheer!  He’s calling for you!”  Whew…can you imagine being blind, begging for mercy, and then the Master calls you to come to him! 

    Whew I just had to stop and let that scene soak in.  Then I had this thought, well actually, this question just came out of my mouth, “How close can I get to you, Lord? Then the flood gates opened! 

    I just don’t know if this human heart can take in the goodness, the love!  I’m just lying here in awe tonight. 

    Michelle

  • He Is So Good to Us!

    Pastor John, 

    This morning I have cried, spoken in tongues and felt sweet Jesus all the way to work!  Beth and I have been listening to a lot of the old CD’s.  It is just one good meal after another.  This morning I was listening to Lou testify about a dream she had and God was telling her that we are as children’s toys, useless until our Master uses us.  It was so good.   

    As I was listening my heart was full of thankfulness.  I’m so thankful to be in this body.  Listening to these CDs you can see and feel how much Jesus loves us.  He is our hero, our teacher, our friend and our comfort.  I feel like complete putty in his hands this morning.  Whew….we are truly rich!  I wish all of God’s children could feel this, Pastor John!  I just want to drink it all in!

    I just can’t stop crying this morning!  His goodness is just so great it makes you leak all over!

    Thank you Pastor John for all the good food you’ve given to us!  I’m blessed to have you as my Pastor…..we all are!

    Michelle 

     

  • Jesus in Torment?

    Uncle John, 

    If Jonah was a figure of what would happen with Jesus, then was Jesus tormented like Jonah was for those three days? 

    The way Jesus was talking about trusting his Father to not leave him in the heart of the earth (in Psalm 16:9-10) makes it seem that he didn’t want to go there any more than he wanted to go to the cross, or even come to earth to start with (Ps. 74:11).  I always thought that once Jesus died here on earth that his troubles and tormenting life were over, and the heart of the earth was just a pit stop along the way back to his father. But now i wonder if his pain and suffering didn’t end until things were put in order in heaven when he was with his father again?

    Is that right?  

    Abby 

    ========== 

    Hey, my sweet Abby! 

    I recently found out that some leaders in the Charismatic Movement teach that Jesus was tormented in hell during the three days that he was in the heart of the earth.  However, that is hard for me to believe.  Jesus would have wanted out of the  heart of the earth (hell) because even the Paradise part of it was not a desirable place (though the Paradise part of hell was preferable to the Torment part).  After all, Abraham was in Paradise (Lk. 16:19ff), yet he was glad to see Jesus’ day (Jn. 8:56), for it brought him hope of getting out of the heart of the earth.  So, the Son of God, knowing that the Father would send him into the heart of the earth, would have spoken through the prophets about the Father’s faithfulness to get him out of that awful place. 

    As for Jesus suffering torment in the heart of the earth, no righteous person was ever cast into Torment; so, unless Jesus’ taking on our sins made him unrighteous in God’s sight, he would not have been sent there.  Some will argue that when Jesus took on our sins, he DID become unrighteous in God’s sight.  And Paul did say that God made Jesus “sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him ” (2Cor. 5:21).  So, “there you go”, as your cousin Elijah often used to say.  If one believes that taking on our sins made God’s Son worthy of suffering beyond the grave, verses exist that he can use to defend that position.  I just don’t see it that way.

    Uncle John

  • Coming Judgment

    Pastor John, 

    Last night as I was getting into the shower, I raised my arm and a loud and painful “crunch” emanated from my shoulder area. For the first time, I felt the love of God toward mankind, in that pain.

    I realized that with every ache and pain, every gray hair and degree of faded vision, Jesus is telling us all, “I’m coming.” The decline of our physical bodies is God helping us to see every day that He is true, and that this life is temporal; judgment is coming.

    If God took a man in the prime of his life and health, it would come as a surprise to him. He would never know that time was running out.

    God has loved us in putting us in these decaying vessels. Every ache and every pain is pleading with men to repent, while there is still time. 

    Jerry

  • Paying More of Our Debt

    Pastor John, 

    Riding into Raleigh this morning, I spent my time feasting again on sister Sheila’s testimony from Saturday night, replaying it in my mind (and my heart) as I drove.  Somewhere during the part where Sheila entreats us to take heed of the fact that “we will pay our debts to God before leaving this world if we are going to be saved,” God interrupted my thoughts.  The injection of His thoughts over my own was overwhelming to me, and it frightened me, as the message that I heard came with a sound and a feeling that scared me.  I did my best to record it as I drove, so that I could type it later.  This (below) is the best that I can do to reproduce what I heard.  I hope I have succeeded.

    “Is God going to pay more of our debt?  If we are debtors to people’s hearts, and we don’t make that right, is God going to have to make it right, and are we going to owe him for the work that he’s done again?”

    If we hurt the people around us (after we are born again) and we don’t make those things right, and those people have to cry out to God with tears in prayer, and God has to come and mend those hearts because we did not, that is God paying our debt, AGAIN, after the sacrifice of his son!  Will God pay our debt again!? 

    Is God going to pay more of our debt!?

    It scared me brother John.  I started pleading with God, “Please let me pay my debts.  God, please show me who it is that I owe; please show me who I’m in debt to, so that I can take care of my own debt and pay what I owe before the judgment comes.  God, allow me to pay my debt, so you don’t have to, once again.”

    The last thought I had was of the man thrown in jail, that Jesus spoke of in Luke 12:59,  “I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the very last penny.” 

    Good night,

    Jerry

     

  • Seeing the Face of God

    Hello Pastor John!!!

    Studying…studying…studying…! This has perplexed me:

    How do I reconcile the verses of

    Genesis 32:30 and

    Exodus 24:10 and

    Exodus 33:11 and

    Exodus 33:v18-23

    with 1st John 4:12?????

    We presume that NO MAN or WOMAN has ever seen the face of God, as John wrote. Yet, God appeared (as a messenger) to Jacob at Penuel; and in His glory to the elders of Israel in 24:10; and to Moses in the subsequent verses above. It even says “face to face” in Ex 33!!!

    Can you clarify?

    Brad

    ==========

    Hi Brad!

    Learning these things is exciting, isn’t it?

    First, let’s consider Genesis 32:30, where Jacob wrestles an angel. Here is our translation of that verse:

    Genesis 32

    1. And Jacob called the name of the place Penuel (1) because he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life was spared.” (2)

    Let me point out that Jacob also said that seeing his fierce brother Esau (after 20 long years) was like seeing the face of God:

    Genesis 33

    1. And Esau said, “I have much, my brother; keep what is yours for yourself.”
    2. And Jacob said, “No, please! I pray, if I have found favor in your eyes, take my gift from my hand because I have seen your face, as seeing the face of God, and you are pleased with me.

    At Penuel, Jacob was so overwhelmed by his experience of wrestling all night with an angel, that he described it as seeing God face-to-face, but that is not what happened, any more than Jacob had seen the face of God when he met Esau. In a previous verse (Gen. 32:24), we are told that “a man wrestled with him until dawn.” But it wasn’t a man, either. The apostle John revealed to us that angels are, in general, the size of humans (Rev. 21:17), and anyone who has actually seen an angel knows. This is one reason the Bible sometimes refers to them as men, as in Genesis 18:2, but even there, the three “men” who visited Abraham are later revealed to be angels (Gen. 19:1), and one of them is even called Jehovah Himself (Gen. 18:22–33)!

    But to get back to Jacob’s wrestling partner, the prophet Hosea got it right when he said that Jacob “contended with an angel and overcame” (Hos. 12:4).

    Now, for Exodus 24:10

    Exodus 24

    1. Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up.
    2. And they saw the God of Israel, and under His feet was something like a paved work of sapphire as pure as the sky itself.
    3. Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the chief men of the sons of Israel; they beheld God, and they ate and drank.

    The controlling factor for any scripture in any book which speaks of someone seeing God, such as the following from Exodus 33, is what God Himself told Moses in Exodus 33:18–20:

    Exodus 33

    1. And he said, “I pray, show me your glory.”
    2. And He said, “I will make all my goodness pass over before you, and I will proclaim ‘Jehovah’ by name before you. Moreover, I will show favor to whom I will show favor, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
    3. But He said, “You cannot see my face, for no man sees me and lives.”

    This is what John meant in 1John 4:12 when he wrote “No one has ever seen God”. Moses saw God (from behind):

    Exodus 33

    1. And Jehovah said, “There is a place by me, and you shall stand on the rock. 22. And it shall come to pass, as my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I pass by.
    2. Then, I will take my hand away, and you will see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

    Isaiah saw God:

    Isaiah 6

    1. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.

    Amos saw God:

    Amos 9

    1. I saw the Lord standing over the altar, and he said….

    Others also saw God; however, none of them saw His face. Otherwise, they would have died; God said so! So, those verses mean only that those men were brought into the very presence of the Lord. (3)

    By the way, someone may ask you a question about John 1:18, for in most translations, that verse is very similar to 1John 4:12. However, we chose to translate it this way: “No one has ever understood God; the unique Son who is next to the Father (4) made Him known.”

    Finally, in Exodus 33:11, the phraseology is admittedly arresting, but what the write meant is only that Moses was in the very presence of God. The event that is being described is Moses’ occasional, private entrance into the Most Holy to speak alone with God, which no other man was ever again allowed to do. There with Moses in that holy place, God would audibly speak with Moses from between the cherubim which were built into the two ends of the mercy seat which covered the ark of the covenant within the Most Holy Place. (5)

    Exodus 33

    11. And Jehovah spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then he    returned to the camp, but his minister, Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not leave the tent.

    Here is what that verse is talking about:

    Exodus 33

    1. And Moses took the tent and pitched it outside of the camp, removing it from the camp. And he called it the tent of meeting, and everyone who sought Jehovah went out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.
    2. And it came to pass, when Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood, each at the entrance of his tent, and they watched Moses until he went into the tent.
    3. And it came to pass, when Moses went into the tent, a pillar of cloud came down and stood at the entrance of the tent, and He talked with Moses.
    4. And all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, and all the people rose and bowed down, each at the entrance of his tent.
    5. And Jehovah spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then he returned to the camp, but his minister, Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not leave the tent.

    I hope that clears things up. Please let me know if I can do more. And do pass on my love to those studying these holy things of God with you.

    Love you all.

    Pastor John

    Footnotes:
    (1)    That is, face of God
    (2)    All translations are ours unless otherwise noted
    (3)    It is interesting that in both Isaiah and Amos’ cases, the person they saw was the “Lord”, not the 3 “LORD”. Many times in the prophets, when they were moved to say “Lord” instead of “LORD” – and unbeknownst to them, of course – the Spirit was referring to the hidden Son, not to the Father. Jesus referred to one such case in Matthew 22:41–45, quoting Ps. 110:1.
    (4)    Literally, “in the bosom of the Father”, a Greek idiom meaning “next to” or “close to”. See 4 13:23.
    (5) About a dozen times in the Old Testament, God is said to “dwell between the cherubim” (e.g., 5 1Sam. 4:4; Ps. 80:1; etc.). And in Exodus 25:20, and 22, when God was telling Moses to built the tabernacle, He said, “the wings of the cherubim shall be spread out above, their wings overshadowing the mercy-seat, with their faces one toward the other. The faces of the cherubim shall face the mercy-seat…. And I shall meet with you there between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the testimony, and I shall speak to you from above the mercy-seat all that I command you for the children of Israel.”

  • The Fear of God

    Pastor John, 

    This morning I was listening to a CD from 2006.  You were talking about serving God acceptably, and how we serve Him acceptably in response to the Spirit moving, that no matter what we do, unless it is in response to the Spirit, it is not acceptable.  You started talking about the priests who wear the white collar and how that was just acting.  You said, “That stinks to my spirit, and their response is go sit in the peeew!”  Then Sandy started laughing, and she said God always gets the last laugh.  Then her laughter turned frightening, and she began to speak, “I hate that, I always get the last laugh.”

    Pastor John, I’ve never felt anything like that before.  The fear of God fell in my car and made every inch of my being tremble.  I was almost afraid to move, to think the next thought.  

    Hebrews 10:31  
    “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” 

    Amen 

    Michelle

  • Sheila’s Blessing

    Pastor John,
     
    Tonight, I feel like we all were rewarded by sister Sheila doing her part with God, and testifying to the results.  She became the results!

    Her testimony about her recent experience with the Lord is one of those rare and awe-inspiring gems that I am thankful I was here to be able to see, and hear, and feel.  And the preaching from you that followed felt like the result of Sheila’s digging so deep with God and then testifying about it.  It was like her godly testimony pulled that wonderful message out of you! 
     
    I love what I saw, and heard, and felt tonight!  
     
    We have the ability to get somewhere with God if we want it.  I saw Sheila do it!
     
    I feel like I got a peek tonight at “old time holiness.”  That solid, deep-rooted “Friend that sticks closer than a brother” feeling that is often talked about when folks refer to the old Preacher Clark recordings.

    Sheila’s testimony tonight also taught me that we, as God’s children, can stir up those kinds of feelings among us. What we felt tonight was because of Sheila’s efforts toward reaching God. She provoked God – in a good way!  She dug for God’s gold; that is why she struck gold!  When she dug deep enough, God poured it out, so much so that it poured out over all of us!  Sheila became a walking blessing for anyone who would hear, and she achieved that blessing by getting down to business with God.  That precious testimony she gave, those feelings that we all partook of tonight, were there waiting for Sheila on the other side of her desperation for the Lord.  She had to act on it.  What else is God waiting to give us if we dig deeper? 
     
    Sheila told us tonight that God made it clear to her, “We will all pay our debts before leaving this world.”  God is going to require of us what we owe, if we become debtors to people’s hearts, including His, in this lifetime.  I felt in my soul that I was glad that God is that way – just, faithful, and dependable, as faithful to punish our disobedience as he is faithful to reward our obedience.  In my spirit, even though it makes me tremble, I know that it is right, and I want it to be that way.  It makes me fearful of “the goodness and severity of the Lord”, while making me feel very safe.
     
    “God’s Majesty, God’s Glory, God’s Power, God’s Righteousness… and I am a little worm.” 

    That was so Beautiful!

    Thank you God for letting me witness her testimony! What a glorious night.

    Jerry

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