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

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

Pastor John,

I passed through the living room and a Ritz Crackers Christmas commercial came on the television showing three homosexual  black men at a table, and one was dressed in a wig, as a woman.

I was sickened beyond anything I’ve seen.  My first thought, for a moment, was to take names and never patronize those brands again.  But I then realized that it is everywhere, and in everything – the spirit of this age.  You would have to stop living in this world.

The Lord let me know that real peace, the peace the Lord gives, is being able to use all these things in this world as gifts from God while we travel through this world, without ever reacting against the mess that is attached to it.  My cause is to obey the Spirit and keep my mind on Him.

A prayer for those in that condition is so much better than outrage and a boycott.  And maybe could help.

Jerry

Dear brother John,

Regarding the Nicolaitans – “REVELATION Jesus’ Messages to Seven Pastors and John’s Vision concerning the Last Days” you write: Note 2, Chapter 6: Theories abound, but no one knows who the Nicolaitans were, or what their deeds were that Jesus hated.

One honestly cannot claim to know that “no one knows” because quite obviously one cannot know what everyone knows.

That said, I am not suggesting here that I do know “who the Nicolaitans were, or what their deeds were that Jesus hated”. Rather, I merely am submitting to you the attached file* on what they may be and what it is that is obnoxious about them. I may very well be wrong, but claiming “no one knows” is wrong too.

Thank you for your kind attention,

Warm regards,

Edouard D.

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Hi, Edouard.

Thank you for writing.

I have read both your email and Mr. Mackay’s essay on the subject, which you attached.  You may be right, that it is incorrect to say that no one knows what the Nicolaitans taught and did, but I think I will hold off from making an abject apology until I hear someone speak on the subject who has heard from Jesus. 🙂

You were right when you condemned the “once-saved-always-saved” nonsense.  And Mr. Mackay is right to condemn the ritualism of the early Christian church.  However, he did not take that far enough.  He should have included Christian  baptism and the Christian ritual of communion with all the rest.  Christ has made all ceremonies useless works.  In that regard, I invite your attention to these two short articles:

 

https://goingtojesus.com/gtj_tracts.html?tname=tract-066-baptism

https://goingtojesus.com/gtj_tracts.html?tname=tract-064-communion

Thank you again for writing.  Just as a suggestion, I would encourage you to concentrate more on the things that can be known because those are the things that truly belong to us.  All the rest belongs to God  (Deut. 29:29)

Take care and God bless.

Pastor John

* The file mentioned is not attached to this blog due to the limitations of using this platform.  However, the link below will provide Mr. Mackay’s position on the subject.https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/eq/1973-2_111.pdf

Hi, Pastor John;

I have really been enjoying the Matthew readings, especially this last one.  Feeling the joy, hearing the songs, Sue’s testimony, and especially your teaching, is “us”.  I loved watching Jimmy Sr. and Rob feeling it, too, as well as all of us, seen and not seen on Livestream.  I’m still bubbling over from the love of God for us.  I love hearing Otis’ laugh and giggle; it is contagious.

The Bible is good for stories about God, and the scriptures are good for reproof, correction, and doctrinal issues, and it does help your faith to read such things, but I loved the part where you where teaching about Jesus coming and giving His life for us to have the Spirit flowing in us, so that we can feel what we felt during the reading – and afterward.  If we didn’t know the Bible as you taught us, we still have the Spirit in us to lead us and to teach us God’s judgments and teach us about God’s kind of love, the life of God and His Son in us and living in us.  It is wonderful thinking about these things.

To have an “us” at all, there had to be a call of God to each one of us that we heard, and obeyed, to start our journey so that we became an “us”, here-and-now.  We were an “us” before the world began, in the mind of God.

I love the authority of God and the government of God . . . it is a safe feeling, knowing there is an anointed man of God over you.  I felt that when I was a teenager, when I first saw you preaching at Brother Delbert’s.  I knew we needed what you had, but didn’t know what it was. Now I know.  It was the government and order of God.  The working and flow of that yesterday is a result of it flowing among us.

I(we) love you Pastor John and your labor of love for us all.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Billy M.

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I couldn’t even begin to say all the different wonderful ways your preaching made me feel today!  It was just altogether out of this world!  The Anointing on you puts it all together, and makes it COME ALIVE, and quickens our hearts and souls!

When I hear it like today, it makes me want to laugh, cry, jump, shout, and just sit still from the joy of what is being said!!! I LOVE IT.  I JUST PLAIN LOVE IT!!

Jimmy T.