Monday Morning Music Ministry

6-8-20

I write this as the third part of an informal tracking of a neglected but essential part of church history – the period after Jesus’s crucifixion and death; Resurrection and 40 days of preaching and witnessing; His bodily Ascension into Heaven, confirming His divine nature; then came the day of Pentecost.

It was the promise of Pentecost – what we have come to call the Pentecostal experience – and Jesus’s careful explanation that it was good that He leave earth, because He would then send to believers the Helper, the Healer, the Comforter: One who would empower and instruct. The Holy Spirit, third manifestation, the third Person, of the Trinity. We shared how the Spirit first fell on worshipers in the upper room, how they received a strange gift of speaking in unknown languages, but understood or interpreted.

This was the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” this spiritual joy and maturity. It was not a one-day event in history. It was merely the first time.

I write this in the midst, whew, of the worldwide pandemic’s fears, afflictions, and social disruption; and in the equally chaotic riots following a police suspect’s death. And… what’s next? People are right to be unsure if not unsafe. Or vice-versa.

As a natural skeptic, I wonder whether we will look back on the shutdowns, this virus, and feel blessed, feel relieved, or feel scammed. And these riots – will we look back and see an explosion of righteousness, or a period of anarchy and looting?

I will keep to my promised theme. I can write about things we see and don’t know are true; or I can write about things we cannot see, but know are true.

Things were different, once the Holy Spirit came. Peter, for instance, had been a bumbling and impulsive disciple who denied knowing Jesus three times when things were dicey – scarcely less an offense than Judas’s betrayal. Yet after the Spirit came upon him in the upper room, Peter became the mature leader of the new church that formed, and a powerful preacher.

What happened to Peter 2000 years ago can happen to believers today, and does happen to believers today. Can you have salvation without the “baptism” of the Holy Spirit? Yes. The gifts are… extra. But who would reject gifts, especially from Almighty God? Would children at birthday parties reject gifts?

Yet, some Christians do. If God chose to express Himself in three ways, we need to remember they were equal manifestations. Jesus was all God and all man; and so is the Spirit.

This same Spirit was explained by this same Peter after he was blessed with gifts of wisdom. He recalled, and shared, the passage from Joel chapter 28 (500-800 years earlier) – And it shall come to pass… says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams…. I will pour out My Spirit in those days…

Now it became clear. “Greater is He that is within you [the Holy Spirit], than he who is in the world [Satan].”

Some Christians claim that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were only for that first crowd. But that is to doubt Jesus and limit the Father, not to mention denying the subsequent evidence. I know because I have experienced the Baptism, and I have witnessed miracles; I have received the gifts. Many people have.

Other Christians believe that sudden outbreaks of tongues, ecstatic worship, and miracles broke out in Wichita around 1900 and in a black church on Asuza Street, Los Angeles, in 1906 is where it started. And then, as we shared, Pentecostalism spread to half a billion people around the world, second only to Roman Catholicism among Christians. Not for now? How would that explain miracles, church growth, healings, and blessings over the following 2000 years?

There are accounts (described by no less a person than Theodore Roosevelt in his classic book The Winning of West) of pioneer camp-meetings and revivals where worshipers would gather for several days, overtaken by ecstatic worship and strange tongues. In the 1700s, similar responses in Philadelphia to public sermons of Charles Whitefield; Benjamin Franklin recorded these. In the 1800s, a similar reaction among lunchtime worshipers on Wall Street, of all places. The blind hymn-writer Fanny Crosby prayed in “the language of angels” only she and her Lord knew. And so forth, all before Azusa Street.

After that, however, there were spontaneous and simultaneous “eruptions” of Holy Spirit preaching, singing, worship, healings, Words of prophecy, and such, all over the world. Two decades ago I twice attended a famous such revival in Pensacola, Florida – a visiting evangelist was used by God to spark ecstatic worship that was not extinguished – 24/7, for month after month; people attracted from all over the world.

If the Holy Spirit is the equal of Jesus… but you don’t have to receive this “Spirit baptism” to enter heaven… why do some of us consider it so important? But as I implied before, if God offers a spiritual gift and we decline it, we are spiritual fools.

What are the Gifts of the Spirit? They listed several times in the New Testament. Any can be prayed for; they can be-one-time gifts – for self-edification, or ministering to a situation – or occasionally are specialized lifetime ministering gifts, for instance to evangelists with healing ministries. They are wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues.

As I said, I have experienced some (blessing others when needed, or to communicate with God when I felt helpless) and I have witnessed healings, emotional breakthroughs, astonishing revelations.

Listen: Christianity is nothing if not a system of faith and belief and miracles. Plain and simple. How have Christians become so blasé about a Man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, and rose from the dead? “Oh, well, that was God, 2000 years ago.” How can there be so many people who go to church (if at all) out of dull habit; who never feel joyful when “Hallelujah” is read from the same old prayer book; who have “forms of godliness, but deny the power thereof”?

They quench the Holy Spirit, embarrassed to seek… reluctant to accept gifts… afraid to exercise the power it enables.

Instead – bringing it today – Christians complain about current events in the news. They feel helpless to do anything about them. They are lost, spiritually, in these uncertain times. In this time of threats and potential disasters facing us, they might even wish for some miracles.

You know what? It is as easy to pray for miracles, as to wish for them. And you have a loving Father who has stored up gifts you can access. Why, oh why, do people neglect the third Person of the Trinity?

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Since the Pentecostal movement is spread across the world, with no one denomination or pope – the Bible is sole authority – it is joyful to see the workings of the Holy Ghost everywhere… and especially, in these day of persecution, how the Spirit empowers traditional Christians, new believers, and persecuted Christians. Here, a group of Iranians who support underground Christians churches in Iran, singing of the sweet Spirit of God.

Click: Come, Holy Spirit

6-2-20

God’s message for the time of plagues, lockdowns, economic distress, international strife, riots in the streets.

I tell you I am going to do what is best for you. This is why I am going away. The Holy Spirit cannot come to help you until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit, the Comforter, the Helper, to you.

We think we are going through strange times, rapidly changing events of great magnitude. Prosperity. Then suddenly the world stops spinning and millions are out of work; schools and shops are empty. The stock market breaks records; commerce is humming. Then suddenly a plague threatens to kill millions. The world’s major trading partners are at odds, then break relations; exchange deadly threats. Hong Kong, reveling in tastes of freedom… waving American flags… singing Christian hymns in the streets… brutally is suppressed and taken over by the Communists. In America, peace in (weirdly empty) streets, then suddenly major cities and towns are in violence, its (savagely crowded) streets aflame.

All within a few months; some things changing overnight.

Jerusalem once was like that. Jesus, that street preacher with a healing ministry, enters the city amidst celebrations and hosannas. Suddenly, in less than a week, He is framed, accused, jailed, tortured, sentenced, and killed. All in five days. The government is repressive, the religious leaders defensive. This Jesus is dead and His followers weep, also fearing for their lives. Earthquakes; the temple veil spontaneously rips in two; the environment is dark. Suddenly Jesus comes back to life. His broken body is perfect. Thousands see him, even skeptical Romans confirm the events.

All within a few days; some things changing overnight.

Jesus did return. He communed. He preached. He explained. People saw. People understood. People believed.

After a whirlwind 40 days – that frequent Biblical number – another change. Jesus left again… lifted up not on a cross but bodily into the heavens. From the Mount Of Olives this Ascension, as we discussed last week here, was the final, supernatural, confirmation that He was God; returning to the throne to sit at the right hand of the Father.

Father? Son? One God? Ah, the mystery of the “Godhead.” God chose to reveal Himself in three ways to His children. He could have chosen two, or two dozen. The Trinity is His choice, all God in three natures. (If we could fully understand, we would be Gods.) Like water, ice, and steam.

The third “person” of the Trinity? That is the Holy Spirit. Present and referred to in the Old Testament. But specifically promised and explained by Jesus before the Ascension. “It is best for you that I depart… The Holy Spirit cannot come until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit, the Comforter, the Helper, to you.”

Who is this Holy Ghost?

The world still asks this. The Holy Spirit is the most misunderstood, and the least accessed, member of the Trinity. When Jesus left this earth in order to send us the Holy Spirit… it is almost like disobedience that we do not welcome the Holy Spirit more, seek its wisdom and guidance and power and comfort.

Fifty days after the Resurrection, Jesus’s followers, men and women, met for the celebration of Pentecost in Jerusalem. They were praying, and as recorded in the second chapter of Acts of the Apostles, something like a mighty wind came through the room. What appeared to be flames rested on peoples’ heads. They all began to speak… in unknown languages. Foreign tongues, unknown words, unbidden.

They ran to the streets. People heard; some understood; some thought they were drunk.

But “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance”; that is what was going on.

And this has been “going on” ever since.

Given the broad expanse of time, this Holy-Ghost experience that has occurred again in these last days – perhaps close to the End of Time – is also a relatively brief and crowded time. In only a century, marked from 1906, Pentecostalism counts a half-billion people around the world, second in numbers only to Roman Catholicism among Christians.

It is a movement that adheres not only to the Bible, in literal terms, but to the practices, power, mystery, ecstatic worship and closeness to Jesus, and miraculous gifts that all Christians experienced on the First Century churches.

Of those “gifts” there are nine listed in the Bible, available to us. Pentecostals (and Charismatics) seek and accept them, and they change lives. I will finish this three-part discussion in the next message – not to be as a schoolmarm lecturing about history, but to share what I have joyfully come to experience.

However, in these troubled times – these very days, these troubled and confusing and dangerous and evil days – I think the Holy Spirit holds more help, and hope, that we can know. And what better time to know that we are not alone. I will share practical Biblical truths. For times such as these, the Holy Spirit was sent to us.

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Click: Sweet, Sweet Spirit

5-25-20

The Pandemic, or as most of us have come to know it in our daily lives, the Pandemonium, even in relative slow motion, has been absorbing seemingly every conversation, every newscast, every blog message.

It is difficult to believe that Easter was only a couple of months ago. Harder still, perhaps, to address the fact that the meaning of Easter seems light-years away. We can note, we do note, that except for a few exceptions the Church has been almost silent on the plague and the reactions to it.

Are church leaders “rendering unto Caesar” and dutifully following rules? Are faith leaders being cowardly? Are they at least stepping forward in their communities, in newspapers, on television, and offering… help? Prayers? Shelter? Alternatives to church meetings?

Mostly, no. Franklin Graham plans a tent hospital in Central Park, in fact in response to a request from Mt Sinai Hospital across the street. The city rejoices. Until he prays when it opens, and dozens of volunteers are in place. Then a successful move begins to force him out of the city. Those New York types hate Christ more than they hate Covid.

Believers have begun to rise up, and now churches are nervously – and occasionally boldly – joining the brave move to exercise First Amendment rights. It is about time! It was getting to be that I thought, if I ever find myself in a foxhole, I would want hairdressers and barbers at my sides.

Yes, we can worship in our living rooms; we can kneel at a stump in our back yards. Yes, we can, but we tend not to; and there is something about worshiping God in a place of God with the people of God.

Since Easter, among the Biblical things that might have been eclipsed is a holiday in the Church calendar that was already fading in importance anyway; a shame. Ascension Day for centuries was a major observance, more important than Christmas.

It falls 40 days after Easter, after the Resurrection. The day is always, therefore, on a Thursday, and most often celebrated on the next Sunday in churches. It marks the event, after Jesus’s final visits and ministering, being seem by multitudes, when He invited the Disciples and others to the Mount of Olives… announced another fulfillment of prophecy… and ascended into Heaven, into the clouds. Bodily. Witnessed by many.

And in that manner, He promised, He would return some day.

In many churches and much of public life today, Ascension Day is scarcely noted. In some countries it still is a national holiday, with schools, banks, and businesses closed… whether it is celebrated in peoples’ hearts or not. I do not know.

But Ascension Day is a holiday in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia(!), Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.

Ascension Day should really be the most important celebration on the Christian calendar. My argument here is theological but certainly not dogmatic; I want to address how apologetics – explaining the Gospel – works.

The Annunciation? The world had to take Mary’s account of her pregnancy by her word. Christmas? A beautiful picture, fulfilling prophecy in ancient books. Jesus’s miracles? Coincidences or persuasions, perhaps. The Passion of the Christ? Foretold, too, but… His death? Did that prove Jesus was the Savior – and skeptics asked about the Resurrection.

And so forth. I flirt with blasphemy, forgive me, to make a point. We are told that with the heart one believes and is justified; and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. What do we believe, what do we confess? That Jesus is the Son of God, and God raised Him from the Dead. The final confirmation of Christ’s divinity is when He rose to be again at the right hand of the Father.

A bodily Ascension, witnessed by many, was the final thing that could not be cast into doubt by a skeptical world.

Of course I believe in fulfilled prophecy, the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, powerful miracles, the Passion and substitutionary death of Jesus, and the Resurrection. But until he rejoined the father He was not fully God again.

Jesus did ascend into the clouds; He was witnessed; and He promised to return to redeem His saints, where we will be caught in the clouds with Him. If you wonder whether you would still be in confusion – as, frankly, the Disciples were – after such a unique scene… note, on the linked video, that Jesus directed them to go to Jerusalem and wait. For what?

It was about a week away, and we shall visit ourselves in about a week.

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Click: Ascension Day

5-18-20

Occasionally things happen in history – I mean catastrophic turns – where the old saying about inability to see the forest because of trees, is taken a step further. These rare moments are not events like an invasion; neither a slow evolution, say, from serfdom to democracy; nor the relentless spread of an epidemic across the globe. A creeping four weeks is no different than a speedy month, is it? – and that is not the type of catastrophic turn I address.

When I was in college I had a professor who taught World History not by chronology nor region, but by category topics. They all were fascinating. One class looked at world history – different eras, different societies – through the lens of epidemiology. How did diseases, plagues, and pandemics change history and the course of civilizations? They certainly did, and often. In the 1600s a plague killed one-third of some European lands; the Spanish flu a century ago reportedly killed 100-million souls around the world. More American soldiers died of the flu in World War I than died in battle.

In those times, all through history, plagues were plagues and influenza was influenza. I want us to consider the possibility that our current situation might be a “virus-plus.” Is there an invisible enemy, a coronavirus? It sure seems so, and many have died of diagnosed conditions; I am not a flat-earther.

But this might be the world’s first plague where the fear of it causes more serious problems than the infection itself. Yes, deaths. But our spinning globe has virtually ground to a halt. The harm represented in that metaphor will be seen by future generations, if we survive, as perhaps worse than simple, cold death statistics. Families, careers, livelihoods, social disruptions, international anarchy, countries losing their freedoms, even wars might be the next chapters.

All this we know. And death vs disaster arguments must yield to logic and a larger sympathy. Many people are gripped by the belief that mere citizens of various nations are not threatened as much as the actual human species is threatened. Really?

I have become convinced that over-reaction has replaced caution among our leaders; and that panic has replaced prudence among our neighbors. Scratch a liberal official with rule-making power and a totalitarian pops out. In my state the governor decreed that DIY stores can sell hammers but cannot sell paint. In many states you can openly operate a marijuana shop, but are forbidden to hold church services. Neighborhood clinics have to restrict services medical exams, but abortions are allowed in those types of clinics.

This is the first epidemic in history with an agenda.

That is not the fault of the fuzzy little virus.

Your mind is not affected if you can wonder at the implausible and changing stories about the origin and the rotating lies as the virus spread across the earth.

You may well wonder at the timing, the US in a healthy and dominant position, dropped to its knees… as an election approaches. How – and why – we went from the healthiest economy in world history, to 1930s-depth depression. In weeks.

You should wonder why politicians welcome illegal immigrants, untested; and tolerate feces-covered vagrants by the thousands, yet you and I, law-abiding hermits, have to mask-up, stand in lines, submit to testing and testing.

You should question, as my friend Sarah Phillips recently did, about the massive imposition of imminent DNA collections, retinal and finger scans, cell-phone tracking, and smiling assurances from Bill Gates and other leaders (elected by whom?) that every detail of our activities – plus that of our bloodstreams through mandatory vaccinations – will soon be seen by people we don’t know. Calm down.

It is very possible – I am persuaded very likely – that we are under attack. Not by guns or bombs. Nor even by those furry viruses.

Am I being paranoid? That is not my style, usually… but even paranoiacs can indeed have people conspiring against them. Ah: conspiracy theories. I have a friend who recently ridiculed skeptics as being “conspiracy theorists.” In the same message – I kid you not – he floated his belief that President Trump is signaling an army of goons (?) by the colors and directions of the stripes on his ties every day.

I have a happy suggestion, if you have read this far and think I am crazy. There are some things that may safely distract you from deadly coronas:

* If you are alarmed by death tolls, spend some your precious emotional energy on ending the drug epidemic – yes, epidemic – in this country. That, you can affect. Straighten up the kids under your roof. Maybe drug cartels will dry up, too, with no customers – what a concept.

* If you are concerned about death tolls, think about the fact that hospitals are restricting, or forbidding, “elective” matters like cancer operations, mastectomies, scans, and other procedures — or patients are encouraged to self-deny — and people die. The stats about fewer cancer diagnoses, screenings, and diabetes complications these recent months are nothing to celebrate. Our masters decree that we shuffle morbidities, a fake-numbers game. Because the side-effects of shuttered businesses and lockdowns include more domestic violence and suicides.

* Stop acting like pickpockets, larding corona laws and regulations with back-door funding for abortions and legal weed and gun confiscation. Be honest, and lose in the courts of public opinion, if you dare.

* Resist freeing convicted felons from prisons and arresting hair dressers, pastors, and barbers, throwing them in jail.

* Show some outrage – if you feel any – about policies that leave hospital ships empty but pour infected people into nursing home beds. Wake up to the fact that in some areas, 80 per cent of “virus” deaths are in nursing homes.

* Realize that hospitals are encouraged to check COVID-19 on death forms, even when primary causes were other, and prior, conditions.

* Google a copy of the Constitution. Read it, and the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments. Check off the rights that have been violated recently, and violated with coercion. There will be many… and there will not be fine-print exclusions for influenza. Remind yourself that reportedly more people die in a normal “flu season” than have yet died from COVID-19. Remind yourself a second time of this fact. We don’t stop the world every flu season.

Finally, among those rights that have been violated – and politicians continue to ramp it up – are Freedom of Assembly (allowing crowds of… how many???); Freedom of Speech (social media routinely censors us at increasing rates); the Right to Bear Arms (laws are proposed to restrict gun ownership – because of a virus???)…

And. Freedom of Religion. Christians, People of the Book, are not dopes. We don’t sneeze on each other, even in normal times. We render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s – like respecting suggestions from experts and elected officials. Sure. We also live with consequences. We trust the Lord; we trust our God-given intelligence.

And we cherish our God-given rights.

Churches ordered to close? Worshipers drive to parking lots, listen in cars with closed windows to their church’s radio services, hungry for a minimal sense of community – and are arrested?

If the British Redcoats, those civilized gents 250+ years ago, had tried any such thing, Americans would have said three words: Lock and Load.

Yes, holding our Bibles and guns, Christians and patriots have to keep their spines from being infected by this “virus-plus”; we have to be discerning and consider whether this is all just a “Plandemic,” as I recently wrote; we must calculate the risks of responsible activities – as with a thousand other daily activities in life – and maybe we should regard the incessant and absurd carping of visible, not invisible, enemies in our midst…

And take our country back. The current epidemic is bad enough. A second pandemic — infecting our spirit — would be catastrophic.

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Click: I Know Who Holds Tomorrow