On Wings of Eagles

I said something in my previous post that really does merit it’s own post.  I mentioned in the last part of the post, almost in passing, about what Yeshua wants from us. I think the best way to put it is in Yeshua’s own Words.

In other scriptures He talks about us loving our enemies as ourselves and showing each other love being the hallmark of who we are, so what do these verses mean? If you take the time to think about it in context of other scriptures He is not saying we are to in fact “hate” these things but our love for Him is so great that our love for these things will appear as if we hate them.  A level of devotion so great that we would be willing to forgo all things if it were asked of us is what He asks for.  So where do we stand? Can we honestly say these things about ourselves? I know that I struggle with it all the time, I can be very selfish in the things I do and each time I am I put my love of self over my love of Yeshua.  This is the struggle we all face, how do I put Yeshua first in our lives? For each of us the path is different because we have different struggles but ultimately it comes down to one simple question.  Am I willing to lose my life and everything in it to serve Him? If you can honestly answer this question with a “yes” then you are one of His.

I started to write a long drawn-out dissection of Anon’s last comment but I am not sure it would be productive. He appears to have a serious lack of reading comprehension and a lack of understanding of logical fallacies. There are a couple of things that he said that are quite disturbing but they are the evidence of his lack reading comprehension. I wrote one anyways

He seems overly focused on the erroneous idea that I want the church destroyed. That somehow I am like Saul of Tarsus. I am not sure how much clearer I can be. I have absolutely no desire to see the church destroyed. Quite the opposite I desire to see the church restored. Heretical teachings have been allowed to creep in over the last few decades. I want people to wake up and see what those teachings are. If we do not wake up and see the path we are going down, Jehovah will see to it that His church is cleansed. What is so hard to understand about that?

He also made the obvious logical fallacy (known as the "no true Scotsman fallacy") when he made the comments about how true Christians act in the face of persecution. How people act in the face of persecution will vary from person to person and from instance to instance. In fact the source of that persecution will even affect the response. In fact if the persecution is from the outside it is much easier to stand in its face than it is to stand in the face of persecution when you do not realize it for what it is because it is disguised in the cloak of religious authority. Even Peter acted in "non Christian" manner when faced with possible persecution yet the faith that Peter showed was the faith that Yeshua said He would build His church. The statement was a bunch of self righteous religious garbage meant to create a guilt response. The kind of sanctimonious response that often drives people out of the church, and ironic considering his statements on the love we are to show each other.

He seems to think I have some kind of beef with the Baptist church, but I do not. A bad experience in an individual congregation does not make the whole corrupt. Baptists for the most part have resisted the heretical teachings that have pervaded some of the other mainline denominations. Yet even a good portion of them have been deceived by a true wolf in shepherd’s clothing. Accepting a clever marketing scheme designed to fill church pews but forgetting that is not what we are to be about. It is not about putting warm bodies in a pew it is about reaching a lost and dying world with the Truth of our Savior’s love. He also seems to lack understanding of the fact that there is a governing body in the Southern Baptist Church that sets doctrine and sets the agenda for teaching programs and such. While it is true that the Baptists are not as rigidly controlled as other denominations make no mistake that they are quick to remove a congregation if they do not toe the line. I have seen it before I am sure it will happen again.

I am digressing from my point though. He has missed my message and my point entirely. The message I was given is simple. Study the word, specifically what Israel went through when they strayed from Him and went their own way. I am told by Jehovah that He has seen the unrighteousness throughout HIS church and He will respond if we do not turn from our sin in the same way that He responded to Israel when they did not return to their one true Love. Why is it that this message creates such fear? Why would you think I want to see the church go through the purifying fire of Jehovah’s wrath? Why would you think He wants to do it? Is it not better to send messengers to the Church to call them unto repentance so that those in the Church have to opportunity to return to their first Love without going through judgment?

Now let’s address my views on politics and fighting the evils in our world. I have in the past been very politically active. I learned a lot in those years. The biggest lesson being that if politics is the avenue you are putting your faith in to fight the evils of our world then you will lead a life of bitter disappointment. The fact of the matter that we are ultimately in a spiritual war for the hearts and minds of men and if we lose sight of that battle we will lose. The only effective way to fight evil is to reach the lost and dying in our world for Yeshua and as Christians is our one true calling. Now that does not mean that I am saying people should not be politically active. If you are lead that way, by all means do so, but never forget where the true battle is. Personally I believe that political activity on my part is a distraction to my calling so I have chosen to abstain, but that does not mean that I have quit fighting evil.

Now as far as the disrespectful manner in which Anon has acted. He has shown that he has a problem with hypocrisy. He makes a statement about the love we are to show each other and then goes on to show an extreme lack of it by lumping myself and others of like mind with the likes of Jim Jones or Joseph Smith. What is your beef? Is it the fact that you are uncomfortable with the idea that Jehovah still uses prophets, can’t look outside of your own preconceived notions of what the church is, can’t open your mind far enough to question what you have been taught by the man up front, or are you afraid of what will be required of you if you do break out of your box and follow Yeshua with all abandon and truly give Him your life.

Ultimately my friends that is what is required of us all. Give Him everything without qualification. Diving deep into His love and living our lives for Him without reservation. It does not matter how we parse the Word or what denomination we belong to, our doctrinal philosophy does not mater if we cannot die unto ourselves and give ourselves wholeheartedly to Him so that He can give us LIFE and give it to us in a measure we could never fathom. What Yeshua desires more than anything is our unending and unwavering devotion to Him, and it is the least we could give Him.

Have you ever wondered how we look to the rest of the world? Can the world see a difference in us or are we just another person in the crowd? My friends we have a peculiar faith. Just think about it.

We believe that a loving and benevolent Creator created us perfect. In our perfection he gave us a free will so that we could truly love Him back. With our free will we decided do the one thing he commanded us not to do and sin entered His perfect world. The penalty for sin that imperfection He cannot tolerate is death. In His perfect wisdom and love He set forth a plan to bring us back and cover our sin in a perfect way and restore in His sight our perfection.

Does this not just sound like the stuff straight out of a children’s story? Yet it is the simple explanation of our faith, the basic understanding of what he did and why. I see in my minds eye the crucifixion of Yeshua and start to recoil at the absolute horror our Lord went through yet at the same time I am comforted by the extreme act of love He did for me in staying on that cross when the easiest thing for Him to do would be to get off of it and walk away. He could have decided it was not worth it and walked away, destroyed His creation and started over. It is within his power to do so, but He chose not to. There is also comfort in knowing that through this act of self-sacrifice He conquered death and the permanent expulsion from His presence we are due because of our rebellion.

The paradox is that it is for the most part it is so simple a child can understand it and realize that it just takes a simple faith; yet we as adults try to make it complex. We add rules; guidelines, doctrines, and anything else that makes the gift look more complex than it is in reality. Why do we do this? It does not add to the message, it dilutes it in ways we could not begin to understand. The answer lies in our sin nature. It rejects the simple because we know our nature is complex and out of hand tends to reject the simple solution to what seems like a complex problem.

Oh, how I praise Yeshua for what He did, and that He made the way to our salvation and eternity with Him so simple. Will you join me there?

This is a reprint of a post from Jan. 17, 2006. It needed repetition.

Because I believe in open and free discourse I have had an extremely liberal commenting policy. My only requirements were that you keep the language clean and that you were respectful.  The anonymous commenter on my site has crossed one of those boundaries.  I will address his comment in due time but I am being forced to change my policy on commenting. First, all commenters must have a name. It does not have to be your name, I also use a pseudonym for my writing. I do this for internet security reasons. Those who know me also know my real name, but it takes a certain level of trust to get to that point. Second, a valid e-mail address will be required to comment. E-mail addresses are not published, but they allow me to respond to a commenter privately. Third, all comments from authors that have not been approved previously will be held in moderation until I have the oprotunity to review them. I realize this will cause some initial hardship on those who comment here regularly but I refuse to publish disrespectful comments.

It seems lately I have been on the defensive and that is not where I want to be.  On one hand it is easy to respond to criticism and a lot harder to be creative but that kind of stance leaves others in control of what goes on my blog. For one thing my posts on being a prophet will become a page on the header so that I can refer others to it in the future rather than continually fighting the same fight over and over again.

The point is that we need to start looking at what we think we know is true and find out for sure without a doubt that it is or change our views to line up with those in scripture. At that point we need to share the love we find in Him with everyone else.

I knew this day would come, I knew it the day I accepted my calling.  This was not prophetic but simply because of a small understanding of human nature. I knew there would be those who would challenge my calling because it did not fit their paradigm. As I said before, my paradigm was much like yours once, that was until Jehovah rocked my preconceived notions about the box I tried to put Him in. I am curious. Have you ever heard G_d speak?  It is no knock on you if you have not, most of the redeemed never do before they die.  Do you believe that G_d is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow? What do you believe Yeshua meant when He said we would do greater things than He did?

There are many more verses in the New Testament where prophecy is spoken of but not once have I found where Jehovah has revoked the gift. Verses 27 and 28 in 1 Corinthians 12 specifically mention one of the offices of the church as being prophet, I cannot even say that the office of apostle is gone as we still have those who teach the teachers and plant churches.  The thing is; quite frankly, I was somewhat predisposed to the idea even before I was called because I did believe what the Word said over what people said. I could not reconcile scripture with the Baptist doctrine concerning prophets I was being taught and even castigated over when I questioned why it was that it seemed to contradict scripture. It was over things like this that set me at odds with church leaders. This is when I learned all about local power bases in a church and how they do not like their predisposed ideas challenged. That a lot of them play lip service to the idea of testing their teachings against scripture, but when they are challenged or even asked to answer why they circle the wagons and act with hostility.

To put things plain and simple I believe the scriptures when He said that we would do greater things than He did and that He has not changed nor will He. If someone could show me where I am wrong then I would be willing to listen, but you need to come with your "A" game as I have studied this and a plain simple reading of the scriptures backs me up.

Anon thank you for commenting again. This does confirm that you are not a troll as some would suppose. To that end I would ask that you please identify yourself in the future it does not have to be your name just some moniker that would allow you to be identified in the future. In reading your comment I am seeing quite a bit of misunderstanding about my calling and what I believe. Rather than make this a long post I will try and chop it up into many posts that cover specific topics. The funny thing is that a few years ago I would have been in lock step with you and Dr. Webb had I run into someone like my self in the past. Lets start with what I am not.

“Jesus, himself, in Matthew 13 said
that the angels, or you or I, were not to purge the church. Instead
He said that the tares and wheat were to grow up together and He
would separate them, purge the church, at harvest. If in any other
scenario, the tares were to be removed the wheat would most assuredly
be damaged. For anyone to say that they were call for this duty
automatically put themselves in conflict with Scripture.”

24Jesus presented another parable to
them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man
who sowed good seed in his field.

25"But while his men were
sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went
away.

26"But when the wheat sprouted
and bore grain, then the tares became evident also.

27"The slaves of the landowner
came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field?
How then does it have tares?’

28"And he said to them, ‘An enemy
has done this!’ The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go
and gather them up?’

29"But he said, ‘No; for while
you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them.

30′Allow both to grow together until
the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the
reapers, "First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to
burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn."’"

Matthew 13:24-30

First off I am simply a messenger. To use the wheat and tares metaphor I am not one of the reapers. It is not my place to reap the harvest. I have never said I was Jehovah’s instrument for the purge. What I am saying is the I and others are called to call the elect back to the Word and a deeper relationship with Him. To quit perverting our faith in order to please a world that Yeshua Himself said would despise us. The more I grow in Him the more I realize it is not even my duty to point out where the tares are but to point to the truth so that people can see for themselves where the enemy has planted the tares.

Annon’s comments continued to bug me. What could I have written that made someone think that I thought that the Jewish religious leaders in Yeshua’s time formed the church.  I went back and started looking at my posts and found the following passage that I think he has misconstrued:

Now that I know where this came from I realize I ought to be more precise in what I write.  I am not sure how it will come across because I tend to write like I think. The last thing I want this blog to become is synthetic where I am more concerned with what others think or may perceive than writing what is on my heart.

I
checked my blog this evening to find a most perplexing comment. I am
not sure who this anonymous commenter is, but he has gotten who I am
and my message ALL wrong.

“I am
both interested and distressed by your stance on scripture. You seem
to want your readers to think you stand on it, yet you seem to have
your own revelations, which is a violation of the sufficiency of
scripture. You seem to borrow from the NT but you tend to base your
stance on the OT.”

First
and foremost I stand on the in-errancy of the Scriptures. They are
sufficient for all things be it instruction, doctrine, reproof, or
correction. I have found that in order to understand the scriptures
you must study them as a whole. The New Testament has no foundational
meaning without the Old Testament.

16 All
scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction
in righteousness:
17 That the man of God may be perfect,
thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

2
Timothy 3:16-17

You seem
to think that somehow I believe Jehovah has given me some revelation
not in scripture. I would tell you that you are reading something
that is not there. Tell me do you truly believe that Jehovah quit
talking to His Children after the Bible was finished? I would tell
you that He does not. I know too many people that He has talked to
for you to tell me that, aside from my own experiences. You seem to
take some kind of umbrage with my status as a prophet. How is it
wrong to take what Yeshua has shown to me and others (I know I am not
the only one)and tell others before it is too late? I was simply told
to study what happened when the Hebrews strayed. Each time, Jehovah
sent them through a time of tribulation that ultimately brought them
back to Him. I am learn how to apply those lessons to our current
situation. Would it not be better if we did not have to go through
the fire?

This is
the part that got me really scratching my head.

“You
say that the first members of the Church were the Scribes and
Pharisees. This is a gross misreading of the Scriptures. Saul of
Tarsus was a Pharisee of the highest honor and yet he was out to
stamp out any and all evidence of the Church and eventually the
Pharisees called for, and secured, the cruel death of their Messiah.”

Seriously
I am quite perplexed. How can anyone even begin to think that
anything I have written even suggests this? I am not even sure what
the second sentence is trying to say. I know that Saul was a Pharisee
but he became Paul after his life changing encounter with Yeshua on
the road to Damascus. The church has nothing to do with the
Pharisees. I think that the book of Acts clearly shows the formation
of the early church, and for me to go through the entire book of Acts would be a bit much for this post.

“Your
banner seems to be that you are suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome,
unable to show love, and are otherwise insufficient for your calling
whereas a true minister of God does so under the banner of the
perfect Omnipotence of The Lord God. When I received Christ as my
Savior, my life immediately began to change and the Holy Spirit began
to transform me into the image of Christ by renewing my mind and my
ability to express Love was in His court. Insufficiency has it’s
place but as a banner shows an arrogance on your part to rob God of
His Glory, as does your use of the terms “Yeshua and G_d”, which
is extremely synthetic.”

How is
it that one comment about my personal struggle with an Asperger’s
symptom and how it relates to the fact that Jehovah calls the most
unlikely people to do His work becomes a banner? I have a personal
difficulty in empathizing with the emotions of others. This in no way means that I am incapable of showing love. This personal difficulty makes me
realize that I have to lean on the Holy Spirit more to overcome all of my
difficulties. You have no realization the transformations in my life
that have happened since accepting Yeshua as my savior. Which brings
me to your synthetic statement. I have said this again and again.
This probably will not be the last. Jesus is the Greek form of the
Hebrew name Yeshua, it is simply my way of honoring Him as He was
Hebrew, or have we forgotten that salient point. To me names are important and how a name is said carries a certain amount of honor and respect. If you have some
problem with a personal means of honor then I am not sure what to
say. It makes no difference to me what name you use.

“You
say that you are called to encourage individuals to grow in Him, but
at the same time, you seem to be generally disgruntled with the
Church for which He laid down His Life. You say that you are in the
wilderness.”

“After
reading your mission statement and the last few weeks of your blog, I
wonder if there is a church of which you approve or do you completely
stand alone. If you do stand alone then why would you accept any
particular writings as scripture. I suppose your self indulgence of
your high level of intelligence would lead you in such a direction,
“Thinking themselves wise they became fools”. For the love of
Christ, make Him you Savior and the strength of you ministry. Lead
others to worship Him and Him alone.”

While
these statements came from different parts of his comment the answer
for each is the same because they dovetail. The answer is predicated
upon the understanding of what the church is. There are several basic
definitions of the church. When we are discussing the Church for
which He laid his life down we are discussing the Bride. This is the
church inclusive, it encompasses all believers. There is a second
definition and that is the local congregation of believers. The third
is a more modern one and that it covers the different denominations
such as the Southern Baptist Church. It identifies a basic core set
of beliefs or doctrines. My being in the “wilderness” comes from
a number of successive abusive local congregations I have been
involved in. It has been a time of healing for myself and my family.
My problems do not stem from the Bride, so to say I am generally
disgruntled with the Church is inaccurate at best, disingenuous at
worst. A question, how does my stance on certain congregations or the
doctrines of apostate denominations have any bearing on my
relationship with my Creator and Lord?

Your
last two sentences put the icing on the cake though. Yeshua (Jesus if
it really bothers you that much) is my Love, and my Lord. My ministry
is based upon calling those of faith to a deeper relationship with
Him so that we will avoid the purge that will assuredly come if we do
not return to our First Love. You have no right to make the claim
that He is not my Savior and Lord and it is the height of arrogance for
you to say that I would lead anyone to worship anyone other than the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.

There was a time in my life that I was very politically active. I fought for my candidates and made my political views well known.  I was even the president of a local chapter of the Right to Life Committee.  I am not there anymore, much to the chagrin of those who are still politically active.  I have come to a simple conclusion.  If we are to effect real change in our nation, politics is not the venue. The hearts and minds of people are what we should be fighting for. There are those who would tell me we need to be fighting in all realms, political, temporal, spiritual, eternal. That we will fail if we do not fight all of these battles. That it is the only way we will beat the juggernaut. I will tell you to save your breath.  Who do we serve? Do we serve an impotent god or do we serve the Holy One of Israel, Jehovah who is capable of all things? Who is more powerful, the juggernaut of our government or Jehovah? If we as His children turn back to Him and forsake our selfish ways, is He not capable of restoring our nation? If He chooses not to then what have we lost?

What government we are under does not matter as long as we serve Him.  All things will work together for His glory.  So why do we struggle in the temporal world to right a ship that we have no power to right? It is like trying to pump out the ocean using a hand pump.  At some point we will be flooded out.  Only when we have turned our hearts back to the One who commands the ocean itself and put our faith in Him and submit to His will we will be restored.  This is a simple truth.  One that Israel learned over and over again. We are on the same path.