My Testimony: My Day Of Pentecost

Remember my previous post of a secret cloud hanging over my head from age 13. Now I am going to tell you something about myself that occurred despite this unknown cloud. Sanctification is a life long process initiated at regeneration and continuing toward glorification. Glorification takes place at a glorious time of the Christian life, his or her death! Death, where is your sting?

Many of you will struggle with this testimony because you have dispensational issues. So don't just throw the baby out with the bath water. Read and rejoice or shelf it for contemplation.

Growing up Pentecostal I struggled with what was erroneously called the "baptism of the Holy Spirit." This baptism is regeneration. I Cor 12: 13 This baptism is a necessity for the new birth and a walk with Christ. It was the baptism of Jesus and the promise of the Father and the experience of Pentecost we sought. In my eight years of tarrying in my hometown church for this experience, I never realized a Biblical fulfilment of this promise. (only those of you familiar with classical Pentecostalism understand this) I never achieved the confidence that I was truly baptized with the Holy Spirit. This was probably because I was never taught the Biblical pattern for baptisms. I was unquestionably baptized by the Holy Spirit and had been baptized in water (trinitarian baptism) by a faithful minister but it was the baptism of Jesus and the promise of the Father I sought. I did not understand this nor did I know that I did not have to seek it! It was a promise and a gift.

In 1966 I was drafted into the Army and was stationed at Dachau, Germany. Our post was part of the concentration camp and our barracks were formerly for Hitler's SS troops. Across from our barracks was a small military chapel and we started a Pentecostal fellowship. Glen Wise was the fellowship leader and G. A. Swanson was the servicemen's representative for the Church of God European Servicemen's Department.

One night prior to our departure for the Kaiserslautern Serviceman's Camp meeting I was again tarrying along with others in the service. As usual it was getting late (time is never a factor in a Pentecostal service!) and in exhaustion I slipped from the altar and went back to my pew.

I sat down ready to go and get some rest for the long ride to Kaiserslautern, the next morning.
The first Biblical hint about this Pentecostal experience is I was "sitting" and more than likely when the seasonally southerly Egyptian wind blasted into the upper room in Jerusalem their "one accord" minds were not necessarily of a spiritual concern. They had been there for ten days! Maybe some were praying, some were testifying or singing. But there had to be some young Davids sneaking a peek at a young Mary at the back of the room. And there were some tired saints wishing they could retire to a sleeping mat somewhere. There were probably people huddled reminiscing of favorite times with Christ.

The only command was to tarry in Jerusalem not Dachau! When Jesus from heaven poured out the promise of the Father on the obedient 120 disciples it began a flow that has not stopped over the face of the earth. They tarried for Jesus' baptism. That is all the tarrying to be done!
We are not waiting on Jesus, He is waiting on us! The irony is that you are waiting on Jesus! No! You are the holdup! If you want this bad enough you will receive it. Ironically your tarrying is the very hindrance because it is a gift and a promise.

I was entering my ninth year of tarrying! I was not giving up but this altar experience was not working and it would not work. I was "sitting" and suddenly I was filled with the promise of the Father! I leaped into the air feeling like I would reach the ceiling. Before my feet touched the floor I was speaking in tongues and praising God. I was endued with power from on high.
Everyone looked back to see what the commotion was. The tarrying stopped and all joined me in praising God. We rejoiced back to the Wise's quarters and that night I knelt by the couch, my bed, and prayed away most of the night in tongues. At Kaiserslautern I met up with fellowship brethren from Munich and we rejoiced in the German streets running, speaking in tongues and praising God. Were the Germans understanding us? I don't know. Was there a gift of interpretation of tongues? I don't think so. We had a personal prayer language. I know that.

So here is the application. I believe it was Tozer who said "no one was filled with the Holy Spirit in a way that he doubted he was filled!" If you doubt you were filled then you probably were never filled. There are two conditions. This sounds contradictory doesn't it? First, sit down, stop resisting, stop hindering and start believing in Christ to baptize you. Let him 'gift' you this promise. He will not 'gift' you a stone or a snake. His eagerness to 'gift' you is greater than your expectation to receive it. Can't you see the self hindrances you put up? I can already hear you saying, "now that speaking in tongues is crazy!" "I will never do that!" "You'll never catch me jumping up and acting a fool!" Well, let me say, you won't receive it! You will never experience the baptism of Christ though you know the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Second and connected to the first is you have to "hit the street" with this baptism. You have to "go into the world" speaking the marvelous mysteries of God. You have to proclaim it in the market place, every place that commerce is transacted you have to be heard and not just seen.
Now this will not be a decision on your part to be heard and not just seen. It is a product of the filling. You will be swept outside. If you are not being heard in the streets then you have not been filled. Absolutely! Not seen in the world but heard in the world. Shame and this baptism don't mix. Bashfulness is swept away by this baptism. If you are ashamed and bashful before the world, if you are intimidated by what men think or say, YOU HAVE NOT BEEN BAPTIZED BY CHRIST IN BIBLICAL FASHION.

Well, I said many of you will not be able to receive this and now you know why! Go, sit, contemplate your commitment and then receive this promise. Maybe, though I truly doubt it, you may receive this endowment with out acting like a fool and "speaking in tongues" but when you are filled you will know it. You will speak the mysteries of God and that in itself is a "foreign language" to most evangelicals today. When you are filled and you know it "speaking in tongues" will be a piece of cake and the world will think you are a fool!

My Testimony: Arrested Development

Not till quarter to midnight December 31, 2005 did I realize what had happened to me when I was thirteen years old. My wife and I were watching TV. I had my Bible open to John 16 and was sharing with my wife what I was reading, I dropped to the floor and on my knees said to her, "honey, when I was a boy I was hit in the face with a pie!"

Immediately I thought to my self, "where did that come from?" I had never told anyone about that incident. It was 45 years ago! I was downtown McMinnville, Tennessee and we were celebrating our sesquicentennial founding of Warren County. I was alone and trying to elbow my way into the crowd to see the pie throwing event. Pies were being thrown at local celebrities. Someone thought it would be cute to hit an unsuspecting individual and I was that person. Suddenly I was the focus of the crowd and everyone was laughing at me. People still laugh at me when I tell this but it traumatized me to the core. I had to go to the 'colored' bathroom that was used as a homeless bathroom. It was filthy and the pie dried to my face making it difficult to clean it off.

I never told anyone about that event. It entered my deep psyche and remained hidden for 45 years. It left me frightened of crowds, always afraid of people laughing at me. It robbed me of my own human potential. I lived 45 years with this deep buried secret. I went on with life, Army, college, marriage, family, career and on the morning of December 20th, 2005 did what I did every morning while taking a shower; bang my head on the shower wall and repeat over and over, "I am so stupid." That was my life's mantra for 45 years.

My Testimony: "God Saves Sinners"

I was regenerate at 10 years old! No one knows when they became regenerate but they know when they confessed their sins and were baptized. Youth camp on Lee Highway, east of Chattanooga, Tennessee was the place I first received remission of sins. I remember weeping as we sung "Oh how I Love Jesus" standing on sawdust and wood shavings in an old open air tabernacle!

Even though I was raised a Wesleyan Pentecostal I was a Calvinist before I knew what Calvinism was. My family listened to local radio, especially Church programs and gospel singing. I heard an old fashion Baptist preacher say Sunday after Sunday we are "sinners saved by grace." That was the little leaven that leavened the whole loaf. I never read what John Calvin wrote. In fact I never heard about Calvin till college. The words of that old preacher went to the core of my being and remained steadfast. Nobody knew better than me that I was a sinner "saved by grace" and when Wesleyan preachers said, "we are not sinners saved by grace, we are saints of the most high," I knew better. While everyone else was confusing glorification with sanctification, I was a young sinner in a struggling process of sanctification seeking what B. B. Warfield called "that sight of the majesty of God that pervades all of life and all of experience."

I overheard adults describe a god who observes human lives from atop a tall building and he sees the cars in collision courses and therefore has knowledge of what is going to happen. "He doesn't force us to do something we don't want to do" they said. I said, "my God has to be bigger than that!"

I knew I was weak and had only a little strength and if I was to keep his word I would need a God bigger than that, otherwise I was on too many collision courses. As a young lad I focused on a sovereign God and not my human potential.

He Was Just A Man!

I've heard that over and over now
that he is dead and I have started this
blog. I have criticized not the man but his theology
and his ministry methodology.

But while he was alive he was a god in the sight of so many. The Bible was inerrant because he said so. People came to Jesus simply because he ask them. If he said, "don't buy a John MacArthur Study Bible," folks believed him. If he said pickles have souls then you stopped eating pickles! His wife shamelessly sang to him from the same pulpit that God's Word was preached and a teary eyed audience joined her in "man" worship.

Christ died with just a few friends to carry him to a borrowed tomb. Peter and Paul were martyred to the glee of heads of state. Adrian Rogers was memorialized as a head of state and now you say he was just a man!

May I remind you again as I have over and over that he was in close proximity to the worst sin imaginable, an ordained associate raping his own son and keeping it secret for seventeen years.

The lingering question is why didn't Dr Rogers know about it? Was God unable to break through and intervene? Did God let this happen and keep Dr. Rogers in the dark?

Is there something wrong here? Could God's wrath be stirred for some reason unknown to us?

Bellevue has now regrouped and moved on with Steve Gaines leadership. Little by little the church will grow back but where is the legacy that Adrian Rogers left?

Someone's Wonderful Grandmother

I ordered a used theology book over the Internet and I received it in good condition except someone had noted on the dedication page: "To Kim and Tony please read page 82 that is so plain to me and explain so well I love you Nana XXXXX"

So here is page 82 (I'll share the title of the Book later)
Likewise, the idea that man must attain salvation by works or merit - that he must do something in addition to the work of Jesus on the cross in order to be saved, i.e. repent, be baptized, hold out faithful to the end, say the rosary, do penance, etc., adds a variable to the equation of salvation making the outcome uncertain. Salvation by human works puts a question mark where God has put a period. Scripture, however is clear concerning the certainty of salvation (2 Sam. 23:5; 2 Tim. 2:19; Jno. 6:37), a fact that can only be explained if salvation is all of grace and none of works.

The team cooperating in salvation, then, is the monergistic team of Father, Son and Spirit, not the synergistic team of God and man. God the Father began the work in the everlasting covenant. God the son executed the work at the cross of Calvary. God the Holy Spirit applies the work during each individuals natural life. From start to finish, salvation is of the Lord.

Warning To Adrian Rogers' Followers!

The Om SakthiSpiritual Movement (from their website)
Humanity stands at a point in history where the world is shrinking and our different cultures and religions are in conflict. This has the potential to destroy almost everything we have accomplished in our short time on this world. This diversity is the wealth of our world and should be embraced. If people realize that we all share the same God and that He/She has allowed us this diversity so that we can each find our own way to Her/Him, then we can accept our differences and even embrace them in peace."
"Also known as the Adhiparasakthi Movement, the purpose of the Movement is to bring Adhiparasakthi's message to the world and serve humanity by helping those in need. Our Guru, known as Amma (Tamil for mother), is the Guiding Light and Spiritual Force behind the Movement. He/She teaches that the greatest form of worship is service to humanity and that we can all serve God together within our individual religions without strife, thus the motto: "One Mother One World." The Movement undertakes many charitable and educational activities and urges its devotees to take an active role in helping people in their communities."

The message Dr. Rogers preached has the early beginnings of synchronization that makes it acceptable with the Om SakthiSpiritual Movement. His free offer to man is the humanistic leaven that satiates the whole loaf. The modern emergent gospel will be a part of the one world religion ruled by the antichrist!

The biblical message of grace is unacceptable to a one world rule. Election and predestination authored by a sovereign God are incompatible with the World's systems. There is no wiggle room for human reasoning to decide. The principles of grace of necessity must be altered to be considered by the world as acceptable.

If your gospel is derived from a steadfast adherence to Dr Rogers, you should seriously consider the problems and prayerfully study the Bible for a correct course. The problems are not minor as so many say but they are major and they have serious consequences. This is a love worth serious analysis as to its biblical content.

Christmas In New Orleans

Christmas in New Orleans. . . enjoy!