ABRAHAM'S BLESSINGS

The law of inheritance is greater than the law of possession! Abraham's blessings are ours by reason of a covenant promise God made to Abraham (Gen 12:3), (Gal 3:16-18). This promise found it's fulfillment in Christ, and those who are united to Him by the "new birth" into God's family. (Gal 3:29) Since God never breaks a covenant He makes with anyone, this one is still in force!

There were three parts to this covenant between God and Abraham, 1/ the tithe, 2/ walking blameless before God, 3/ offerings. We should take a closer look at each one.

1/ The tithe---In (Gen 14:17-20) we read about Abraham giving a tithe (10%) of the spoils from his victory over his enemies, to Melchizedek, who is a type of Christ. (Heb 7:15-17). This was over 400 years before the law was put in place by Moses. The main scripture on tithing is found in (Mal 3:6-12), where God states His displeasure with His people for not paying their tithes and offerings, and thus bringing a curse upon themselves. As a contrast to a curse, He promises to pour out a blessing on them if they will honor God by bringing the tithe into the storehouse. Our God is Holy, His Word is Holy, and His tithe is Holy. The tithe is God's own personal property, and is not ours to do with as we please. We don't give, or "pay" the tithe, we "return" it to the Lord because it is His. We then have the 90% to live on, and dispose of as we see fit. Our offerings are to be given from this 90%, and can be directed wherever we wish them to go, but the tithe is to go to the "storehouse". In our day this refers to the local church we attend, where we are fed spiritually.

2/ Walking blameless---(Gen 17:1-2) God said to Abraham "serve Me faithfully and live a blameless life" in order to qualify for His blessings. This same qualification applies to us today. To live a blameless life before God means to keep His commandments as outlined in the NT, realizing that this can only be done in the strength of the Holy Spirit who indwells us. We will never be "faultless", or without sin in this life, but we can be "blameless"! These two words have completely different meanings. Thank God, He has made provision for our failures, see (1 John 1:9)

3/ The offering---(Gen 22:1-2) Remember the word "offering" means "to present for acceptance or consideration". In this case Abraham offered his son freely in obedience to God's command, in faith believing that somehow he would be restored to him by God. This is the type of faith toward God that we should be operating in!

Here we see the three requirements for receiving the blessings of Abraham that we are promised as God's children. Remember the requirements must be fulfilled before we can expect to receive the blessings! There are always conditions attached to all of the promises of God. He is not some sort of a heavenly "Santa Clause", just waiting to fulfill all of our selfish requests!

Sincerely submitted.

Gramp

THE BODY OF CHRIST

I am presently reading a book by Derek Prince entitled "Rediscovering God's Church", and finding new ways of describing the Church, that I have never before heard. I have studied about the Church for many years, and thought I had heard all there was to hear about it, but I was wrong! The thing that he pointed out about the "Body of Christ", which as you know, is one of the terms used in scripture to refer to the true Church that Jesus said He would build (Matt 16:18), that I had never heard before, is what I would like to share with you. Just in case you had never thought of it like this either!

Several scripture passages compare the Church to the human body, with our head Jesus Christ, from whom we get our directions, located in heaven at the right hand of the Father. And of course we who have accepted Jesus as our own personal Savior make up the various parts of His physical Body here on earth. (1Cor 12:12-28), (Rom 12:4-10). We have spoken about that many times, but Derek brings out the fact that just as a human body rests upon our two legs, so does the Body of Christ! When God designed the Church He set it up in this manner, but then man's structure took over, and this simple truth was lost. One of these legs is the "Apostolic Teams", which we see clearly in the book of Acts by studying the ministry of Paul. These were the mobile, or traveling part of the Church which planted new churches, and the other is the "Presbyteries of Elders" that these Apostolic Teams always set in place in every local church they planted. (Titus 1:5). In other words one was meant to be the outreach to localities where the good news of the gospel had never gone, and the other was the permanent leadership team that governed the churches that were established by the Apostolic Teams. Notice these men always worked as a team of at least two, and often three or more. The only time you see an apostle mentioned alone is when he was in prison!

The title of Elder is an OT term that was carried over into the NT Church. They are always mentioned as "Elders" (plural), and functioned as a team. Local Elders could also be prophets or teachers, but then become "Apostles" when they were sent out by a local church. (Acts 13:1-3). Here we see the first case of prophets and teachers in a local church being sent out as apostles at the direction of the Holy Spirit. Elders always sent out apostles, who reported back to the church that sent them. Then when new churches were formed, the apostles always set in place elders. These Elders in turn would later on, at the direction of the Holy Spirit, send out apostles. So in this way we see God's "Reproduction Cycle" in action! All this has been lost because man decided he could come up with a better system of structuring the church! As I see it the church today needs a complete restructuring, and a restoration back to the original plan! But are our present church leaders willing to implement such a change, which might affect their security, by way of current position, pensions etc? These are questions that need to be seriously addressed, in my opinion!

Sincerely submitted.

Gramp

THE ETERNAL CHURCH (part 7)

In this final segment of this series of teaching on the Eternal Church, I will attempt to review some of the main points as I see them. Please bear in mind that this has been a very brief look at the overall plan of God for His Church, which is the earthly "Body of Christ". One day soon this body will reach maturity and be ready for Christ to come back and claim her as His Bride, to rule and reign with Him as His eternal companion. As we have mentioned, when we look at the Church in her present condition of immaturity, we can easily see that much more restoration must take place to bring the Church back to where she was before the period of deterioration known as the "dark ages". We took a brief look at some of the Restoration movements that have occurred in the past decades since the time of Luther, but realize that (Acts 3:17-22) has not yet come to completion!

What Brother Hamon refers to as the "Structural Church", which came into being under the reign of Constantine, will have to give way to the "Spiritual Church", which is the true Body of Christ. This will have to be the work of the Holy Spirit, and will require a time of "Repentance" on the part of the complete Body of Christ. At the present time the Church has been so infiltrated by the spirit of "humanism", "materialism", and various other "isms", especially in the West, that this will not be an easy task for the Spirit! Possibly the only way for Him to bring the Church into a place of maturity, so that it will be ready for the return of Jesus, is to "start over" again as at the beginning that we see in the book of Acts. This would require a complete "Restructuring" of existing Church Denominations, which have been structured after the "Religious System" set up by Constantine centuries ago. Personally I can't imagine this ever happening in the near future, but we know that with God all things are possible. Right?

One encouraging development on the church scene, is the growth of the so-called "House Church Movement", or as some have termed it "The Church That Meets At-----home, or----address". This sounds like NT terminology like we see in (Rom 16:1-16), and other places. Whether the Church meets in homes or some other type of buildings, the meetings should follow the guidelines laid down by Paul in

(1 Cor 14:26), and should be under the supervision of a "Plurality of Elders", as I have come to understand scripture. Under these guidelines, no two meetings would necessarily be the same, because our God is very creative! I believe this type of structure would facilitate spiritual maturity in believers, and would hasten the end-time harvest of potential Kingdom residents!

Sincerely submitted.

Gramp

THE ETERNAL CHURCH (part 6)

We ended the last segment in this series by mentioning the "religious system" which has always opposed the true Church that Jesus has been in the process of building for some 2000 years now. This religious system was in force through the Jewish leaders during the time of the earthly life of Jesus, and then during Paul's ministry. They were afraid of losing their position of power, and fought hard to prevent the Kingdom of God from being established. Later we saw that the Church of Rome did the same thing, trying to protect their position of power. History proves that this same type of opposition occurred whenever God revealed some truth that had been lost during the dark ages of the Church. The former group always felt they had received the final word from God, and severely persecuted those with the most recent revelation from God!

After Luther restored the truth about "Justification", many other men were given further revelations of truths that had been lost, such as "Sanctification", or "Holiness Teaching" by groups like the Wesley brothers. Then the teaching on "Divine Healing" by men like A.B. Simpson and others. The "Pentecostal Movement" brought back an emphasis on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit in the early 1900's, and was not well received by the holiness groups. Then in 1948 a move of the Holy Spirit was poured out on a group of students and teachers in a newly formed non-denominational Bible school in North Battleford Sask. in Western Canada. The truth restored in this move centered around the "Gifts of the Holy Spirit", and how they were to be received by the laying on of hands, by a "Presbytery" of Elders. Also "Singing in the Spirit" by an entire congregation was restored to the Church at this time. With each new restoration of truth came some fanatical teaching that was a "counterfeit" of the real truth, and brought some confusion. This always caused some people to reject this new truth, for fear of getting mixed up with the counterfeit. And of course others followed the counterfeit and ended up in extreme error. Jesus warned us to beware of false prophets and teachers that would come in the last days. (Matt 24:4-5, 11) Paul cautioned us in (1 Thess 5:19-24) to beware of false prophecy or teaching, and to test everything we hear with the help of the indwelling Holy Spirit! God is faithful to lead us into all truth, because He wants a Church that is "without a spot or wrinkle, or any other blemish" (Eph 5:27), and moving in "Present Day Truth"

Sincerely in Him.

Gramp

THE ETERNAL CHURCH (part 5)

During the 12th and 13th centuries certain movements such as the Albigenses, and the Waldensians, were raised up to protest the activities of the church leadership. These were followed by men like John Wycliffe, who translated the Bible from the Latin Vulgate Version, used by the Roman Catholic Church, into English. Having the Bible in the language of the people, instead of just in Latin, plus the advent of the printing press, played a major role in bringing about the "Great Church Restoration", that ended the Dark Ages in church history! The common people could now read the Bible for themselves, and discover what God's Word had to say to them.

Martin Luther is the man credited with starting a restoration movement within the Roman Catholic Church, that became know as "The Protestant Movement". It started on Oct 31, 1517, when he nailed his now famous 95 theses to the door of the Church in Wittenberg Germany, and 3 years later he was declared a heretic and was excommunicated by the Pope! He never planned to start a new religion, only bring changes to his beloved Catholic Church. The followers of Luther became know as the Lutheran Church which became the state church of Germany. Other men like John Calvin, and John Knox were raised up as part of this Protestant Movement, and soon other countries formed State Churches such as the Presbyterian in Scotland, and the Anglican in England. The truth that had been lost to the Church, that Luther brought back, was "Justification". The scripture the Holy Spirit used to bring revelation to Luther was "the just shall live by faith". (Hab 2:4) and (Rom 1:17).

Luther brought changes to church theology but not to church structure. When the church became part of the Roman Empire under the reign of Emperor Constantine, he organized it after the pattern of the empire that he was familiar with. This was the structure that can be traced back to king Darius, which was improved by the Greeks, and then perfected by the Romans. This is a "top down" structure that has permeated every sector of society, including the "religious system". It is originally patterned after Satan's kingdom of darkness, and is nearly the opposite to the type of leadership set in place by Jesus in His Kingdom. To understand this read "The Sermon on the Mount" (Matt 5, 6, and 7) where He gives the rules, or bylaws by which His Kingdom was meant to operate. Because this was opposite to the ruling religious system of the day, which was under the control of the Jewish religious leaders, including the current high Priest. Naturally they opposed Jesus because His teaching threatened their religious system! This pattern of the ruling religious systems persecuting the true Church can be traced throughout the history of the church since Constantine established it in 313 AD. First it was performed by the Roman Catholic Church, then by the various Protestant denominations against any new group who started teaching a new revelation of truth given them by the Holy Spirit which threatened their established structure!

Sincerely submitted.

Gramp

THE ETERNAL CHURCH (part 4)

Now the Church entered it's 1000 year period of "deterioration" referred to as the "dark ages" of church history. Here is a quote from page 87 of Brother Hamon's book that explains the main cause of this decline, "Most church historians agree that the Edict of Toleration was the most damaging to the

Spiritual Church, even though it brought life and liberty to the Structural Church which prospered greatly with it's new-found social acceptance, political power, and material possessions". Constantine encouraged his constituents to become Christians, but Emperor Theodosius made it compulsory 70 years later when he made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. Now everyone had to belong to the church in order to be a Roman citizen. This resulted in many people becoming church members in name only, without repenting of their sin and being born again. This gradually opened up the church to the military spirit of "Imperial Rome", which then ruled the Roman Church even after the Empire collapsed. When the Church became a political organization patterned after the Roman Empire, the very nature of church gatherings changed. Gone were the simple gatherings of born again believers in Jesus led by elders, and now "worship had developed into elaborate, stately, imposing ceremonies which had all the outward splendor that had once belonged to heathen temples". The Emperors forced the pagans into Christianity, and the pagans forced Christianity to accept many of their religious customs, and these became part of the traditions of the "Structural Church", many of which remain to this day!

We need to realize that there is a vast difference between the organization of Satan's kingdom of darkness and God's Kingdom of light. The original Church that Jesus said He would build, was patterned after God's Kingdom, and the example of Jesus. The leaders were humble servants, who submitted to one another, and were accountable to those placed over them. The structural church that emerged from this merger with Rome was patterned after Satan's kingdom, where the leaders competed with each other to see who would be the chief ruler. Many pagan customs were brought into the church at this time, along with false teachings such as the worship of certain saints, and elevating Mary to the position of "Queen of Heaven" or "The Mother of God". Probably this was based on the Pagan worship of Diana, or the Egyptian Goddess Isis. Unfortunately many of these customs remain in the Structural Church to this day!

Sincerely submitted

Gramp