http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jdc3

Hi Pastor John,

Every 3 months, we run a report to see how many streams and downloads we have for the Thanksgiving Live Vol. 2 so we can pay the royalties due to the company who oversees that.  This reporting period, July – September, we had 224 individual song streams on that one particular CD.  We had people listening on iTunes in Canada, South Africa, and even one download of “Reach Out and Touch the Lord” on iTunes in Singapore.

Since there was in increase in streaming on that CD, I checked out our other CD’s too.  On the Father and Son Music CD, someone in Singapore has also downloaded “You’re Still God”.  Looking at the Thanksgiving Live Vol. 1, there has been a definite increase in streaming, showing just over 100 streams in a two day period (The Rose, Jesus’ Fax Machine, The Book of Hebrews, Together in Unity, etc.).

It is exciting to think of any of God’s children finding our music and finding comfort, strength, and hearing an echo to what the Spirit is saying inside of them.  There were recently 10 streams in one day of “Jesus’ Fax Machine”!  Now, whoever is listening to that song and enjoying it is my friend! 🙂  I pray for our brothers and sisters.  This is music for them!

Donna

 

Hello everybody.

Today at lunch, Vince asked me a simple question that turned into a pretty big deal – with us, anyway.  So, I thought I’d pass it along.

Vince asked me what Jesus preached in the heart of the earth when he went down there?  I told him that Jesus would have had to preach the same thing he preached on earth.  He had to tell them that he had come from heaven, and that he had died for the sins of the world, and that whoever believed on him would have eternal life.  The people who heard Jesus preaching, whether they were in Paradise or Torment, would have had to believe what Jesus said in order to be saved in the end, the same way the people on earth had to believe.  Nobody in the heart of the earth had the Spirit, and so, nobody in the heart of the earth knew the Son of God.  Amy said she had always thought the people in Hades were excited and rejoicing when Jesus came there.   But there was not a great celebration when Jesus descended into Hades.  He was just another man who had died and went to where dead people always went when they died at that time.  It wasn’t as if the people in Hades knew that this was the man who had raised the dead because the people that Jesus had raised from the dead were not down there to tell them.  They had to believe the gospel just like everybody else had to believe it.

The righteous souls who were in Paradise had the kind of spirit that would have believed Jesus and the ungodly souls who were in Torment probably would have refused to believe him.  Jesus could have told them that he was going to leave Hades in a few days and separate Paradise from Torment and take Paradise with him when he rose from the dead, but who could have believed that?  Nobody had ever done that before!

The main point is that only those who have the Spirit can know the Son and nobody in the heart of the earth had the Spirit.

jdc

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John,

The scene that comes to my mind is where, in Luke 9:30, Moses and Elias appeared with Jesus.  Were they in Paradise?  Did they tell those there the messiah was coming to preach or did John the Baptist continue his ministry in Paradise. 

Wendell

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Good questions, Wendell!

As for Moses and Elijah, neither of them was in Paradise.  Nor could they go there. Paradise was for dead people.  Elijah had never died, and Moses died but it appears that he was soon raised from the dead to prevent Satan from using his dead body (Jude 9). Moses and Elijah will return and preach to Israel, and be killed (Rev. 13), and then they will finally be taken into Paradise, which is now in heaven instead of in the heart of the earth.

Those two great men of God knew that Jesus had to die in Jerusalem, but they had no way of truly knowing either the Father or the Son because the knowledge of God comes through the Spirit, and “the holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

As for John the Baptist, he did not know the Son before he died, and death did not reveal the Son to him.  Nothing in heaven or on earth or under the earth has ever revealed the Son of God to anybody!  ONLY THE HOLY GHOST DWELLING INSIDE A PERSON REVEALS THE SON OF GOD TO THAT PERSON!  

In Paradise, John could tell about seeing a dove light on Jesus, along with his other experiences on earth, and he could share with those who are with him in Paradise the messages the Spirit spoke through him on earth.   But as for his ministry, it ended – for him – when died. Also, his baptism was only for Jews who were alive.  And besides that, from what Jesus said in his parable about the rich man who died, it appears that John would not have found enough water in Hades to baptize anybody, even if he wanted to.

========= On 10/14/2014 4:33 PM, John Clark Sr wrote:

Trust me, folks.  ALL wisdom and knowledge was hidden in the Son, and until the Son was not revealed until the holy ghost came.  Trust me.  NOBODY knew either the Father or the Son until then, and even at that, it took time for those with the holy ghost to realize all that had been revealed.

🙂

jdc

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Wow, that’s interesting. I always thought everyone there in hell knew exactly who Jesus was. Its amazing to now think they did not know!! Beyond my original ideas I didn’t know anything else. I would have guessed that only those in good spiritual condition and had been faithful to the law would have been glad to see Jesus.

Thank you so much for teaching us the truth! I love it!

Jenny

 

 

 

 

Pastor John,

I was thinking again about this morning’s meeting and some things that were said about how needed and precious the holy Ghost is. What Stuart and Uncle Earl said about needing to feel the spirit in everything, and how sweet it is, is exactly what I felt Wednesday night after you prayed for me. To feel insufficient as a human and the need of Jesus and the spirit was a good feeling. I felt every bit of encouragement and truth in what you said when you prayed for me, and while I was sitting on the floor, I felt the spirit tell me, “This is all you need…this, right here.”

The feeling and understanding was that the feelings I was having of loving the spirit in me and feeling the need, loving Jesus for what he has done, and thinking that he is enough…that was it. It felt like everything revolved around that and those feelings, and all of that is what makes things right. Living and resting in those feelings and love is what clears up judgment, builds relationships though fellowship, encourages you, makes you feel loved, takes away fear…which is perfect, because that’s everything I need!

Leah

Pastor John,

Wednesday night was absolutely wonderful…   I love what God is revealing to us!  Just to begin to see how great the Son is!  I can’t even get it across here.  It is just so sweet to feel the blood flowing like it is.  And then to hear (again) that God was just tolerating, in compassion for them, the Jews who had the Spirit continuing to observe the law.  As soon as the spirit was sent down, the Law was as filthy rags!  Amen!  I had never looked at it that way before.  Something in me thought the Law was still holy for a little while for the Jews after the spirit came.

Anyways, last weekend when my parents were up here in Boone working on the house with Abby and I, we read 1 and 2Peter.  While we were reading through it, it really stuck out to us some of the things that Peter was telling the Gentiles!  I went back through it this week and read it, knowing where Peter had come from and trying not to take for granted that Peter was saying these things to the Gentiles.  What Peter told the Gentiles was really good.  It felt like Peter understood by this point the greatness of the Son.

Thank you!  I hope God lets us share what we are learning with His people.

Aaron

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My notes from 1Peter:

1Peter 1:1-2

• Peter actually wrote to the Gentiles: “to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia…” 
• Peter tells the Gentile believers that they were chosen by God! …
• … through sanctification of the Spirit! Not included or necessary: circumcision, laws, just water baptism or even John the Baptist’s baptism.

1:10

• The prophets prophesied of God turning to the Gentiles.

1:15-16 

• The Gentiles, by the Spirit, can be holy and please God.

1:17 

• The Father has no “respect of persons”, but judges according to every man’s work.  What good news for the Gentiles!  Paul’s doctrine being preached, and what God had tried to get across to Peter before he went to Cornelius’ house: “What God has made clean, don’t you call common!” (Acts 10:15). And then what Peter told Cornelius when he went, “Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation, whoever fears Him and works righteousness is acceptable to Him” (Acts 10:34b,35).

 1:23 

• They had been born again of incorruptible seed (unlike the corruptible seed of man that the Jews had been born of).

2:5, 9–10 

• These Gentile believers “are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ… ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people… Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.”

This would have been considered (the highest?) heresy by devout Jews in Jerusalem.  A very bold thing to say!  Peter seems to have learned his lesson from Paul, that Paul told Peter in Galatians 2:11-21.  Galatians 2:16:“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”

3:6 

• Peter calls Gentile women who had the Spirit, Sarah’s daughters, “as long as you do well and are not afraid with any amazement”.

5:2 

• The Gentile believers were part of “the flock of God”.

 

John,

On Wednesday night when you were passing on to us what Jesus showed you, there were times when the feelings that went through me felt like a current going through my chest and out my arms.

Reading Galatians, Philippians, Romans or just thinking about scriptures since then, I see the gospel Jesus gave to Paul everywhere, that the law is no longer the thing! Jesus didn’t suffer, die, and send back the holy Ghost in vain. He wants us to live in his power and Spirit! His gospel is alive and it is making us alive!

I feel thankful to have heard and felt what he sent to you for us.

Bess

http://www.goingtojesus.com/text/books/fatherandson.pdf

Pastor John

The feelings last night were so sweet you could taste it and smell it! And of course it stirs up many good thoughts. I loved understanding that it was the goodness of God that tolerated Peter and the others keeping those old things of the law.  I think to this point I had been trying to work it all out in some kind of mechanical way, but what you said put it all in the light of the love of God for His people.  It adds something to Paul’s statement, “God formerly overlooked the time of ignorance.”  Paul was saying that God was doing that for Gentiles, but we learned last night that He was doing it for the earliest believers as well.

I don’t think this was mentioned in particular last night but it came to mind and I looked it up from “The Father and Son” book: The gospel is another thing that the Son is.

Nobody comes to the living God by means of a dead thing, a what. In the kingdom of God, His word is a who (Jn. 1:1), His wisdom is a who (1Cor. 1:24; Prov. 8), as well as His righteousness and His light (2Cor. 5:21; Mt. 5:14; Jn. 8:12).  Even the gospel is a who. In Galatians 1:15–16, Paul magnified “God, who called me by His grace, to reveal His Son to me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles.” Several times, Paul uses the phrase “preach Christ” (1Cor. 1:23; 2Cor. 4:5; Phip. 1:15–16), which tells us that in Paul’s mind, the gospel was​​ Christ and that to preach Christ was to preach the gospel. 

But the following, last line of that paragraph is really, really good in the light of last night:

Before the Son was revealed, it was impossible for anyone to preach the gospel because no one knew who the gospel was.

As you said, Peter and the other “first” apostles did not know how great the Son was, and so they could not preach this gospel. I feel a need to re-read the F&S book.

I love the very first sentence of the book. If Paul’s gospel was Christ then it was Paul that God used to reveal the Son.  Right now I’m not sure, or can’t recall, whether the book makes a plain statement as to when, and how, the Son was revealed.  There is this:

The truth that John was attempting to convey in the opening lines of his Gospel is also the essential point of this book, and of the gospel itself; namely, that God had a Son with Him in glory from before the beginning of the world.

That fact really is the good news, the sweet message, and sweet is how it was last night!

On the other hand, things like this (the underlined sentence) need thinking through in the light we now have:​

With that revelation, we are offered two bedrock truths of the New Testament. The first is that the Son of God was the first thing created. The second is that the Father is greater than the Son because He existed before the Son did. Both the Oneness and the Holy Trinity doctrines contradict these simple truths. The former claims that the Father and the Son are one and the same being, and the latter claims that the Father and His Son are co-equal and co-eternal. But Jesus knew nothing of such doctrines. He said that his life had been given to him by the Father (Jn. 5:26), and he also said that the Father was greater than he (Jn. 14:28).

The gospel preached by the apostles took both those facts for granted. Paul saw no problem at all in the Son falling down before the Father – something impossible for the Son to do if he were the same person as the Father, and something illogical for the Son to do if he were his Father’s equal

And this:

Peter walked and talked with the Son for several years, but only after being born of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost did Peter refer to Jesus as “the Prince of life” (Acts 3:15). Before God’s kind of life entered into Peter and created within him the knowledge of the Son, Peter would not have dared to refer to anyone but God as the “Prince of life”. The revelation of the Son that God’s life brought into Peter taught him that there was someone with God who was to be praised as God, someone sitting beside God before whom he must also bow, and beginning at Pentecost, Peter preached that message without fear of displeasing God! With the revelation of that other divine being, Peter and all the righteous in Israel began to honor as God both the Father and the Son, knowing that the revealed Son was the “Prince of life” but never forgetting that the Father remained the King of it.

Peter regularly said things that were beyond what he understood, so it is a little tricky to separate it all, but the revelation Peter operated under is dwarfed by what later came through Paul.

Damien

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I agree​. Some sentences in the “Father and Son” book ​will ​need to be reviewed and tweaked so as to reflect ​the ​earliest apostles​’​ ​incomplete understanding of the Son​,​ even after they were born again on the day of Pentecost​.

Sister Wille m​ight be right after all​, Damien​. ​ ​The Father and Son book may really be an endless project​ – but the journey surely has been exciting!

Pastor John

 

http://www.goingtojesus.com/site/php/thoughts.php?tname=tfe10-01

What a great Thought for the Evening (10-1)!  I always looked at Jesus being the Shepherd and the preachers as the Care Takers that is assigned to care for the flocks. The problem is that there are many care takers that are not caring for the flock and leading them astray.  Leading them astray due to not listening to, and delivering the word of God to the sheep.  I love the “Home for our Spirits while we are living in this world.”  I love the deepness of the word and the daily thoughts.

Karl