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  • Paul’s Time Line

    Pastor John,

    We’re up to the New Testament part in your book, Suffering and the Saints, and Brad asked me when does the New Testament start. I answered correctly that commonly it’s thought to be the book of Matthew but that we know it really started when the holy Ghost was sent back and filled the disciples.

    My question was what is the length of time between the disciples receiving the holy Ghost and Paul going forth to teach the Gentiles, as it feels like that is the real beginning of the New Testament.

    And, Brad wants to know how many years transpired between Paul beginning his ministry and Peter preaching to Cornelius’ house?

    Lots of love!!!

    Allison

    ==========

    Hi Allison!

    Concerning your first question, it cannot be determined from the scriptures exactly how much time passed from there day of Pentecost until God sent Paul with his gospel for the Gentiles. It was obviously a matter of years, not months. According to Paul, after his conversion, he went away to Mount Sinai (“Arabia”) to meet with God, alone:

    Galatians 1
    15. But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by His grace, was pleased
    16. to reveal His Son to me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood,
    17. nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; rather, I went away into Arabia, and then returned again to Damascus.

    It was there at Mount Sinai, I suppose, that Paul was caught up to the third heaven and received his incredible revelation of a new gospel:

    2Corinthians 12
    2. If in the body, I do not know, or if out of the body, I do not know; God knows. Such a man was caught up to the third heaven.
    3. And I know such a man – whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know; God knows,
    4. how that he was snatched up into Paradise and heard inexpressible things which are unlawful for a man to speak.

    Paul’s gospel was indeed, as you say, a beginning, but it was not the beginning of the anew Testament. Paul’s gospel was the beginning of the full knowledge of God, the beginning of the eternal gospel, instead of the gospel for the Jews which Peter and the other apostles, which passed away when God finished dealing with the Jews as Jews.

    The story of Paul’s conversion is told in Acts 9, and Peter’s preaching at Cornelius’ house is in Acts 10; however, that does not mean that Paul had begun preaching his new gospel before Peter was sent to that Gentile’s house. As you have seen, Paul spent a significant amount of time seeking God (and no doubt studying the scriptures and learning of Him) after his conversion. Moreover, if Peter had heard of Paul’s gospel before God sent Peter to preach at Cornelius’ house, then Peter and the Jewish brothers who were with him would not have been surprised when God poured out the holy Ghost on the Gentiles:

    Acts 10
    44. While Peter was still saying these things, the holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the Word.
    45. And those of the circumcision who believed, as many as came with Peter, were astonished because the gift of the holy Spirit had also been poured out on the Gentiles!
    46. They knew this because they heard them speaking in tongues and magnifying God.

    I hope this helps. It was good to hear from you!

    Pastor John

  • Freedom

    Hi Pastor John,

    I watched that movie Newton’s Grace today and then read the Freedom tract. It made me think about what would happen if we were enslaved. It is not such a far-fetched idea anymore. I thought about all the guidelines, regulations, and the curfews in place now and I thought about who we are. We are still us, treating people right, loving Jesus, and being who God made us. I really do love us. They could chain us up, take away every earthly good, even keep us from each other and we could still be us. We could still have fellowship. Feels like we have already tasted a very small degree of that, and we are still happy and loving Jesus and still FREE. Sitting in the meeting room, wasn’t it (though I do pray to be there together again).

    I loving seeing who we are. I love that I am in the We. Who would we be if He had them take it all away? We are seeing a glimpse now.

    Who are Junior and Natalie, and Damien and Kay, when sickness comes? They are His. Testimony after testimony of Us being His.

    I can hear Brother Earl testifying as I write this “If I live I am His, and if I die I am His.” I believe I value that testimony much more now.

    I hesitated to write to you again, but it is so good to me! I keep thinking of Daniel being torn from his homeland and still being true to God the whole time, even when facing lions. Daniel belonged to God, regardless of where he was or his circumstances.

    We have His spirit in us. We have more.

    I am thankful to see who I am, how I feel, and how I spend my time without you all and without meetings.

    Ps…But I really miss you all, too!

    Beth

  • Soil and Flowers Testimony

    Hey, Pastor John!

    I’ve been meaning to write out this testimony from last week! I think about it a lot and I’ve told various people and I just love how it feels. A couple of months ago now, we finally bought a large bunch of flowers to landscape the front of our house. I placed them how I wanted them, dug a hole, put them in the ground, watered them some (maybe once or twice a day), then watched them ALL die, less than a week later (I am not a gardener). A week after I planted them, we had Uncle Bob come over to till up the ground at our front corner for a nice little area for flowers and our boulder from Paul. Those flowers and grass have been there now for over and month and they are beautiful. Looking at them, I realized the difference…we hadn’t tilled up the soil in front of our house.

    So two weeks ago, we took back the dead flowers, and I got all new ones. But this time, before I planted them, we tilled up the ground really well and deep, and added some cow manure and fertilizer mixed in. The ground was so soft and easy that it didn’t take much to make a hole and put the plant in. The afternoon that I finished planting them, that’s when we had the 3 1/2 days of solid rain. I was thankful for the rain to give my plants something to drink and live by! It’s been two weeks and they are doing just fine. The difference was the care we gave the soil!

    Jesus let me see a parallel between that situation and real life! We have to do something! We have to do our part, then let God have it. That first lot of plants got full sun since the day they were planted, but the second lot (when done right) got days of rain to establish them. That was God. It was as if God was saying, “Ok, you’ve done your part, now it’s mine.” 🙂 We have to care for the soil that we are in. We have to pray, read our Bible, pay attention to what and who we are listening to, what we spend our time doing, what manners and attitudes we have with people, etc. All of that is fertilizer to our soil. We have to do something!

    The best part, though, was that Jesus showed me that you can change the soil to make it better! I did it wrong the first time and didn’t care for it as I should (maybe a bit lazy), but we got a second chance to do it right, and it turned out perfect. nAfter those days and days of rain, some may say that too much rain might not be such a good thing… but it was in God’s hands anyway! That wasn’t my business. I did my part and the rest was up to Him. That takes the burden away of having to do it by yourself. God knows just what we need, and when we do things the right way to tend to our soil, He’s going to finish the rest. But you have to help keep it up as well, and watch for weeds and fertilize every once in a while. It’s not “once planted, always planted”. Good soil takes work.

    I love being able to slow down in this crazy and hectic life to learn things from Jesus. How merciful he is for second chances!

    Leah

  • Ancient Holy Men and Speaking in Tongues

    Pastor John,

    Did Jewish prophets like Moses or other ministers speak in tongues when they were anointed by the Holy Spirit before the birth of Jesus Christ?

    Jacob,

    Hamilton, Ontario.

    =========

    Hi Jacob.

    Thank you for the question.

    The Mormon sect, and perhaps others, teaches that righteous people were given the holy Spirit and spoke in tongues, etc., from the beginning of the world. But that is not true. The holy Spirit, which brought with it the experience of speaking in tongues, was not given to man until after Jesus was slain, ascended, and was gloried to sit at God’s right hand (John 7:39). Jesus had to come and die in order to purchase that blessing for us, and when he ascended to the Father and offered his own blood to Him for our sins, God accepted His Son’s sacrifice and poured out of His own bosom His eternal life, which we call the holy Spirit, upon Jesus’ followers who were waiting in Jerusalem for that “promise of the father”. 

    Most of the confusion, Jacob, concerning the baptism of the Spirit springs from ignorance of when a person is born again. The disciples were born again on Pentecost morning, not before. If you concentrate on the issue of the new birth, you will find answers to many otherwise unresolvable questions. You can start here: https://goingtojesus.com/gtj_books.html?tname=afterjesusdied

    Let us know what you learn, and feel free to send us any further questions or comments.

    Your servant in Christ,

    Pastor John

  • Slander Thoughts

    I just have to keep reading the poem, “The Second Eve.” Wow.

    I read it and read it again, and think of Satan slandering God to the angels in Heaven, the ones there with God! I thought of them here, now, and wondered if they too know not why they were offended. “No one ever knows”? Do they look on and see Satan working and slandering here on earth, or are they blinded? The thoughts the other day about Jesus being hidden in plain sight made me think of how God puts angels among us, hidden in plain sight, trying our hearts at times. To take in the fact that all of this is not something Satan was doing without God’s knowledge or even His hand, from Eve to Christianity…it leaves my spirit feeling after more, but it is like through a veil.

    I keep thinking of Richards’s testimony of the root, and how it had to be exposed to the sun. The Light, The Son, The Truth, kills the root of all slander. Sin, Christianity, anything anti-Jesus. Jesus is the answer! God did that!

    Just feeling my way through these thoughts to you.

    “Saints undone and plundered of glory and of peace, empty, yet elated, knew not that life had ceased.”

    Terrifying.

    Psalm 51:

    10. Create a clean heart for me, O God, and make within me a new, steadfast spirit!
    11. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy Spirit from me

    https://goingtojesus.com/gtj_thoughts.html?tname=tfm06-01

    Jesus was slandered in Jill’s heart.

    Beth

     

  • Good Reading

    Good morning,

    I really loved the reading on Friday night. Sometimes, it’s not about the words on the page as much as the feelings from the words on the page. I loved what I felt when we were reading those pages.

    So many things stood out to me. The second paragraph on page 2 really packed a punch! (But the whole top half of page 2 is so good)! You wrote:

    “The holy Spirit is God’s answer to everything human. It is the answer to all that is wrong with you and all that you think is right with you. The Spirit of God was not sent to us to take sides; it was sent to take over – completely! And all the options that Christianity provides to walking in the Spirit are slanderous lies against the One who sent it. That is why God’s children around the globe keep hearing a “still, small voice” whisper in their ear, “Come out of her, my people.” God is not calling His children out of the world; they are already out of the world. He is calling them out of the institutionalized slander they have joined, and into his pure, eternal life.”

    That is so true! The holy Ghost is the answer to everything! Yet, slander against the One who sent the holy Ghost has tried to convince us that we don’t even need it! As a matter of fact, in all my years in Christianity, I never once heard that there was such a thing as being baptized with the holy Ghost! Many of us sat in congregations for years and were offered any and everything except the joy and peace of being filled with the Holy Ghost and walking in that! We were told that baptism with water was the One baptism and that was all we needed. We were told that if we repeated a few scriptures and “accepted Jesus” as our Lord and Savior, then we were saved and not to dare let anyone make us doubt that! We were told that when we drank a little cup of grape juice and ate a small, dry cracker that we were having communion with the Father! We were told not to go by our feelings. We were taught that the Bible was the word of God! We were taught that the Father and His Son were part of a divine trinity wherein they were separate and they were one, all at the same time. It was total confusion! And it was all lies. It really was institutionalized slander! Slander that was intended to come between us and our Father! Those rituals and doctrines only served one purpose, and that was to take the place of the real relationship we can have with Jesus through the holy Ghost. The holy Ghost is everything! If that’s left out, then Jesus can be nothing more to us than an unattainable being who lives far away in the sky.

    What if we had been satisfied with calling the crackers and grape juice our communion with Jesus? What if we had believed that sprinkling some water on a baby’s head or dunking someone in a dirty river was the One baptism that Paul talked about in Ephesians 4? What if we had remained in those pews for all those years like dead men walking?

    But so many of us felt that there must be more to Jesus than the dead rituals and doctrines we were experiencing in Christianity. And with a sincere heart, we took this simple thought to Jesus, “There has to be more to You than this”. And little did we know that Jesus was just waiting for us to come to Him with that thought! By being open and sincere with Jesus, He was able to show us (through His Spirit), that there really is so much more to Him than the dead rituals and false doctrines of Christianity. He gave us the truth by leading us to a place where we could be fed good, clean food that leads to “pure, eternal life”.

    Thank you for feeding us more good, clean food through this writing! I know it has taken hours and hours to get it all down, but I’m hoping a sincere heart who is still inside those walls of institutionalized slander will read these pages, and then feel free to go to Jesus with the questions he’s had in his heart. He’s waiting…

    I’m looking forward to reading the next section (or rereading this one)!

    Lee Ann

  • What’s Going on Right Now

    Pastor John,

    I was thinking today about what sister Natalie said, about the person she used to be before Jesus came and filled her with the holy Ghost, “You can dig up that old girl but you can’t make her live!”

    It occurred to me that there are many ways that ungodly spirits of this world are trying to “dig up the flesh” of God’s people and “make it live.” It is all over the news and social media. If those spirits can make us leave our hiding spot with Jesus and come back to the flesh, and defend it, then they ARE making it live. And they can overpower us there and disrupt our walk with the Lord.

    When we are walking in the spirit of God we are removed from this flesh. We are in an invisible hiding place where spirits wandering this world can’t touch us. But if those spirits can hurt our flesh and provoke us back into it, to try to defend it, then they can reach us. If they can hurt the flesh of people of our race and provoke us, or the flesh of similar social or economic status, or levels of authority, or belief systems, or any other “team” that our flesh is on so that we come back and defend it, then they can get to us. We aren’t stronger than the spirits in this world, we are just hidden. Getting us unhidden is the goal of the ungodly.

    Whoever or whatever we are connected to that is not Jesus, is the thing that can draw us out of our hiding spot. Spirits are turning the screws on everything right now searching.

    People are being used all over. The unrest, the violence and destruction people are participating in, it is hurting THEM, but they still don’t stop. It makes me sad today for all of the folk being moved like pieces on a game board. None of us are stronger than the spirits in this world that can move us. But God gave us protection, through the Spirit we received. We can stay hidden.

    Jerry

  • Worldly Unrest

    My Dear Pastor John,

    I needed to testify what Jesus has done for me in matters regarding the unrest happening in some parts of the United States.

    It’s utter foolishness says the Lord smiley face2  For every one atrocity (or fatal accident) there are hundreds of incidents that went without a problem. But, those hundreds don’t get media attention. And, the voice of reason – God and his Son – is so reviled that no peace can be found. I wish His voice could cut through all of this but that’s not His plan I guess.

    I have turned off all social media and am staying filled with the Holy Ghost just as He wants me to do!

    Brad and I love listening to the slander readings and look forward to the day we can be face-to-face again but are hopefully spirit-to-spirit even though we are miles apart.

    With gratefulness and love,

    Allison

    ==========

    Amen! This touches me. Allison is choosing what Jesus came to offer all of us. Rest and Peace ( yes capitalized!) from a world that thrives off unrest and chaos. What a beautiful example of Jesus working in the body. This was what was promised us when we took His name. We all have a war out there waiting for us if we choose it. Allison is choosing Jesus and it is beautiful to see.

    Beth

  • Slander in the World

    Hey John,

    In chapter three, you mentioned the three spiritual conditions that have to be present for slander to occur. All of the spiritual conditions are describing children of God. The one doing the slander is defined as the unwise believer (Chapter 2 also calls them the foolish virgins in the body of Christ). But I was thinking on the case of institutionalized slander that is done by Christians who are not necessarily in the body of Christ. That case doesn’t seem to fit the definition of the unwise believer – someone with the holy Ghost.

    I do understand how Christian ministers fool the innocent because they claim to be the body of Christ and the innocent don’t know any better than to trust them (i.e., because everybody just “knows” Christianity is the religion of Christ). Is it because the backslidden true body of Christ is entangled in that institution that gives it and its ministers the same effect as of a trusted unwise believer? Or is it that the spirit of Satan (being the original slanderer and unwise believer) is the one behind that religion. I’m trying to make the connection between the institutionalized form of slander and the definitions that you’ve given. Do you explain this in the book?

    Thanks,

    Lyn

    ==========

    Hi Lyn.

    Slander can and does happen in the world at large among sinners. I am concentrating only on how slander works in the body of Christ. I have not made that clear in the book, yet, but I need to. Others have asked about that, as well.

    Thanks for bringing it up.

    Pastor John

  • Slander

    Sincere hearts.

    What Jesus wants is so simple and pure as opposed to that cunning, dark, tangled mess of slander. It really touched me.

    Sincere and open hearts, what can stand against them? Not Christianity, not sin, not Satan, not division. The purity of what Jesus wants from us just touches me!

    Beth

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