GodsStudent wrote:I suppose I will need to read your responses a few more times before they click for me. At present, I feel misunderstood......
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I find it intolerable that I have to compromise and submit myself to a place where, in the midst of the world we live in right this minute, the second most amazing thing that has ever happened on this planet (not the 1st coming of Christ, but His second coming) is imminent in this generation, and we are not interested enough or learned enough to discuss it's happening. How can I go there every Sunday and weekdays too feeling resentment that it's not important enough to the very Saints of the Most High Christ Jesus to stop and look around....to look up like the scriptures tell us to do?
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I do listen online to powerful sermons that rock me to my core and I am being fed, but of course, my daughter and my husband are not getting fed, and so their conditions deteriorate.....something must be done....we must follow scripture's commandment to forsake not the assembling....
perhaps Jay, you are telling me that I must focus on my own relationship with the Lord and be content to have it and to let my little light shine wherever I am put....but if I am put there, it is not in my heart to be there....I want to be with the serious minded in Christ, where I can be challenged to continue to grow and be evermore sanctified.
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....Can Christians Be Deceived? Yes, they can, and I earnestly feel I am at one of those such crossroads where Christians compromise on something for whatever their reasons and they end up compromised themselves....Sure I may go eyes wide open, but will I be able to have joy? I don't think so.
We have a Calvary Chapel nearby and while I personally don't like the music, I think I'd prefer that to this church, so I may just compromise in that way....I am still looking for edification and to learn from you all....which is why I keep trying to share what is going thru my mind. I will read Jay's posts a few more times to see if I can understand them better.
I am sorry that I am a complex person trying to express God’s heart with mere words. I know your frustration about being with like minded Saints who study the word and glean from it the very essence of what God is trying to convey to the reader. But I too become frustrated with their lack of understanding and unwillingness to be challenged so that their boat like mine is rocked.
Sadly we are a people of tradition and the tradition of miss understanding prevails as people are afraid of changing their “foundational” understanding of scripture.
It is my view that at present, we are coming towards the end of the third 1,000 years period spoken about in Ezekiel 47:1-12 from the time that God’s presence inhabited Solomon’s Temple when it was dedicated. Jesus also spoke of this same time period in the Parable of the Sower but few are able to see the time dimension hidden from view as the sower moves easily from the rocky ground, along a path, across an unprepared ground and finally into the prepared field which is the Millennium Age. Today I would humbly suggest that we have been planted in the unprepared field where the weeds compete with us for life. The cares of this world around us are choking us as we attempt to raise our heads up towards the heavens with our increase of praise unto the Lord.
The above understanding is not what is the “accepted teaching” of the theological elite. Their understanding in my view is, so often, suspect.
A friend of mine told me today that he was invited to go and listen to a “great visiting preacher” from the USA and when he began to investigate the credentials of this preacher, warnings were flashing all over the internet about this preacher and his teachings. Subsequently, he did not accept his friend’s kind invitation and stayed at home instead.
Over the last 50 years when I would go to church I would become uncomfortable about being in the building and would get up and go outside, much to my wife’s horror. It would be noticed by the other attendees and they would seek the Lord as to what was wrong with me and they would then begin to construct various rational theories as to why I had a “problem.” Usually I would be uncomfortable because of the spirit residing in that place/community. But inevitably they would reach the conclusion that it was I who had the problem and that they should be the ones that I should submit myself too for “healing” prayer to have the “evil” spirits cast off of me. Naturally I would decline their offer for prayer based on their divination of what was “wrong” with me for not accepting their teaching insights.
What I have come to understand is that God reveals to me what is grieving his Heart in those places and often I would find myself quietly shedding tears of anguish for the people in there under the respective teaching of their leadership.
If you are being called to this prayer when you enter those places, then you are indeed, rubbing shoulders with the very best Saints in Christ as few are called into this essential, unseen and often unrecognised ministry. It is a ministry with great responsibility as much is revealed to you, but it is a ministry where often your only avenue is to pray unseen for the people that they would be protected from the errors being embellished and that they will turn away and return back into the arms of our loving God.
My understanding of the “End Times Timetable” and how God’s plan will play out is of little consequence when I start to become uncomfortable in any place which I may join to worship in for a time. I usually find that it is my wife who drags me along to the new places where god wants me to be. However, my understanding of words translated as “generation” within the English Bibles does help me to understand their theological position and error, but then that is a topic of another thread maybe, if it has not already been choked to death by the volume of posts on that theme.
It is my view that the actual meanings of the original language words translated as “generation” in our English Bibles would be better served if they were translated as “age, i.e. a period of time a little while longer than 1,000 years. When we understand this possibility of a miss translation then the verses where this occurs takes on a very different time context and inference. Even I am learning new things as I consider words that have been translated as “water,” etc. and begin to see the possibility of a completely different theological thought or concept.
But if I am called to a ministry of prayer these new concepts fall away as I begin to focus on what God is revealing to me in my spirit as to what I should be praying on and over.
It can be a very lonely ministry and one that is not very exciting but then years later your heart becomes glad of the very small part that you prophetically prayed about, when it finally comes into reality in God’s time.
Shalom
Jay Ross