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Brother John,
I woke in the night and heard this, over and over, and so I wrote it down: “The law is to no one but to who the spirit is speaking.”
What do you think?
Natalie
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Hi Natalie!
I hope you are having a good day.
What you heard last night is from the Lord. It is sound doctrine.
In this covenant, God’s law is in the Spirit, and whenever the Spirit speaks to a person, that is God, giving that person His law.
Thanks for sending that!
Pastor John
I have a tendency to over-write, so I’m trying to resist that tendency. And I certainly don’t want to write something that would seem to you like mere flattery. Yet, I simply can’t resist thanking you and praising you for your superb, eloquent, spirit filled sermon.
It blessed my heart so deeply, not merely because of the content of what you said, but because of the investment of your loving heart that you put in it.
Allison and I watched it twice Sunday morning just to be sure we didn’t miss anything because there was a lot to take in. But that’s what’s good about a banquet: you can always go back and have seconds…or thirds.
I’m sure we can all look forward to being criticized and persecuted for loving the truth, but as you and your father have said: it’s better to seem a fool than to be one.
God bless you John, for never wavering from the gift and the responsibility you’ve been given.
Brad
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Thank you, Brad, for loving it. That is a cup of refreshment to me.
“Whoso gives a disciple a cup of water in my name shall receive a disciple’s reward.”
jdc
“The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice!”
John,
Jesus quoted Isaiah’s prophecy that he would come “to preach the acceptable year of the LORD”
This is probably simple, but what does it mean?
The whole quote: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach liberty to those held captive, and recovery of sight to the blind, to send the oppressed away free, to preach the acceptable year of the LORD!” (Lk. 4:18).
Wendell S
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Hi Wendell.
That was the Son of God speaking through Isaiah, and quoted by Jesus in Luke 4:18. In another place in Isaiah (49:8) the Son of God also said, “This is what Jehovah said [to me]: “In the acceptable time, I will answer you, and in the day of salvation, I will help you. And I will watch over you and give you for a covenant of the people….”
When Jesus came preaching, he was saying was, in essence, “This is it, the acceptable year of the Lord! This is the day of salvation.” And he also was saying, “I am the one spoken of, who will be given for a [new] covenant!”
So, “the acceptable year of the Lord” was when God sent His Son from heaven to pay the price for man’s sin and become the author of a new covenant.
Pastor John
Hi Pastor John,
I loved the feelings Sunday. The message was wonderful! I’m like Gary, you said the message was for the young but I took in every word! It was so good!
It went right along with some things I’ve been experiencing lately. It is a part of life, things are going to happen that will hurt you, disappoint you or things just don’t go your way. For a couple of weeks I have felt like it’s been a one – two boxing match with things coming up. I would pray and cry to Jesus. I kept asking him, “Jesus, what do you want from me?”
Saturday morning I woke up early with a heavy heart. I got my coffee and just had some quiet time with Jesus. I was talking with him and telling him how heavy and burden I felt, then the sweetest thing happened! My heart started flooding with all that Jesus has blessed me with. I started thanking him for each one. I started walking around my house thanking him for the truth and the understanding he has given to us, for our Pastor who feeds us food we never have to pick through, for giving my husband the holy Ghost, for our home, our food, our clothes, our health, our family, There was so much, Pastor John. Jesus really does care, even down to the smallest detail, he cares. My heart was so heavy when I started but so light when I finished. The whole day, and since, my soul has felt rest.
That is what Jesus wanted from me, a thankful heart and to remember Him, in everything and every situation. Remember He is it! He loves and cares for us very much, through all our times, good and bad.
Michelle Gunter
Hey John,
Dee and I enjoyed listening to the reading this morning.
Something that stood out to me was that on the new earth, you have mentioned that time would be no more. However, in Revelation 22 (KJV and your translation), it says that the trees would bear fruit monthly. It seems like there must be some element of time. Maybe, in the Spirit, everything just happens automatically!
We appreciate your writings, John.
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Hi Jim.
You’re right! Maybe instead of using calendars, we’ll just watch the trees to see what time of the month it is!
Seriously, there are verses that do indicate some kind of time passage after we are on the new earth. Isaiah, for example, mentions going up to worship God each new moon and each Sabbath (Isa. 66:23).
Thanks for pointing that out.
jdc
John,
Please help me understand the prophecy that says Jesus “made his grave with the wicked and rich in his death.”
JWS
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Hi Wendell,
We know that Jesus was buried in the tomb of a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea. Few people had the means to pay for a burial chamber to be hewn out of rock, as Joseph did. I suppose that in that particular burial place were burial places for other rich people, also hewn out of rock, and most of those people had been wicked. That’s what I have always taken that prophecy to mean.
jdc
Pastor John,
Good morning! I was listening to Kent Hovind this morning while tidying up. He teaches creation. He made an interesting point and i wondered if u have an opinion or think it’s good. He said that Adam saw God create everything so his faith was stronger, but Eve didn’t because she was created last. Mr. Hovind supposes that is why Satan targeted Eve – because possibly her faith was not as strong. I’m wondering about this. If it has an validity to it.
Do you have any thought about it?
Jenny
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Hi, Jenny,
Adam was created last. He saw no creation at all. He was even asleep when Eve was created.
Pastor John
Hi John,
I was very blessed this morning listening to files from Betty from this morning’s talks.
My big blessing came when you were talking about Montanus, and you said that one author had the perfect description of him. Something close to: “The spirit of Montanus was not the spirit of the church”.
Man, that was SO good. To walk in the Spirit is to NOT have the spirit of the church (Christianity). I believe many of God’s Spirit filled children feel that way (I hope they do)… they are “trying”, but no matter how hard they try, they just don’t have the same spirit as the church does. Let them see this, Jesus.
That is my testimony… and I would say the testimony of many of us who did walk in Christianity, at some point in time. I NEVER fit in. I was let down. I was disappointed or rejected, and I was to the point of almost wondering if there was a real truth out there that could satisfy what I longed for, but Jesus did not let me lose hope and he did not let me stop praying.
I prayed “if there’s truth out there, God, help me find it.” The bottom line is, that the Spirit God gave me was not the spirit of the church. But I could not put two and two together. It took Jesus, and you, and the saints working, to get truth to me, and to help me find out who I really was, and what spirit I really had. And to love the fact that he HAD given me a different one! It was the voice of my shepherd.
May God do that for others out there, our brothers and sisters who have a different spirit than the one the church has. They just need to find out who they are. If He can do it for me, he can do it for them. I sure to hope some of the materials being sent out get in desperate hands and hears.
Thanks for that golden nugget from today!
Gary
Hi Pastor John,
Sitting there this morning reading Chapter 9 of your Revelation book, my heart was pounding. It just came to life!
I love when Jesus lets you feel it.
This is what struck me the most.
God could not have given us a simpler way to please Him. Follow, just follow. We have been given everything we need to follow. I thought of little children when playing “follow the leader”; they usually are so closely and blindly following that person in front, that they will even bump into each other when a sudden change is made. They are not trying to figure out the next, best move for the leader to make or anticipating where they are gonna end up; they just follow. God must shake His head at us. I thought about this, going all the way back to Eve’s “good idea” and Adam following the wrong one.
This jumped out at me.
Page 14 under “Renewed Expectations” – He said to them (Acts 1:7), “It isn’t for you to know times or seasons which the Father has reserved to His own authority.”
I love that! It isn’t our business; it’s God’s business. All we have to do is follow. What true peace that is! If we are truly just following, then we don’t think we ought to have health, long life, meetings praising God together, and we don’t think we won’t; we don’t think, we just follow. I think I love it so much because it is what Jesus has been teaching me. I had ideas of how things should be ,but very gently Jesus has been teaching me, those were my ideas.
I had an idea I would get the holy Ghost, live among God’s people, and we would praise God together in your basement until I leave this world! I had an idea Natalie would be old and white-haired, sitting in the basement with us. I had an idea if we obeyed God and did well, we may suffer a little, but just enough to burn some dross off. But who has said that? I was putting ornaments on the tree this year, thinking about how hard I have found it to just live in the still time. I haven’t known what to do with myself. I know I want meetings, and your teaching, and seeing each other all the time. I want movement. Jesus hasn’t said to me it would be that way, and he didn’t say it wouldn’t. As I stood there, thinking about that, I knew I needed to hear that thought. When I did, I felt peace.
“The purging of the heart from imperfect thoughts yields perfect peace.” – the elder, Daniel, in The Jerusalem Council book.
You posted this on FB, and it was so good. It’s even better after this morning. I wish I could write you some educated, well thought-out feelings about how wonderful and clear this is, for the ones I pray Jesus lets see it, ( I do find it so wonderful), but I am just swimming in awe at how long humans have had their own ideas: which tree to eat off of, building calves, striking rocks, moving to Sodom, picking kings, who to kill, who not to kill…
It just makes the fact that God gives us the holy ghost and everything we need to just follow so much sweeter. Don’t design, don’t map out, don’t plan, don’t think…just follow Jesus home.
“But what makes any truth hard to understand is a heart dulled by what it thinks it knows!”
(This is just stamped on my heart!)
Beth Durham
Yesterday at work, I was just singing randomly, and I started singing about New Jerusalem, and then I had this question: Is New Jerusalem an actual city/place, or is it the bride of Christ? I remembered the Bible talks about it coming down “as a bride adorned for her husband”. This morning, I looked it up in Revelation (21:2) and read through that chapter. I noticed in verses 9-10, the angel tells John he is going to show him the Lamb’s wife, and then the angel shows John the city. And he describes the city as having a wall and gates, etc. Then in verse 27, it talks about the ones who will enter into the city are those in the Book of Life, so from that, I think the answer is that New Jerusalem is a place where only the bride is, not the actual bride, but I wanted to ask you about it.
Thanks,
Lyn
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You have it right, Lyn. I have heard some believers say that the city itself is the bride of Christ because of the verses you mentioned, but that is nonsense. Jesus will “marry” his faithful saints. Paul suggests this when he said that his goal was to present the saints “as a chaste virgin to Christ”. May God grant us the grace to be in that number “when the saints go marching into” the new Jerusalem! Oh, and to say that the city will be prepared for Christ and his wife “as a bride prepares herself for her husband-to-be” is just another way to say that God will make it very pretty for His Son to celebrate his wedding.
Pastor John
