Thursday, September 30, 2010
Does the World Hate You?
Jesus warned us that we would be hated:
If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. John 15:18-19 NIV
But what if the world doesn't hate us? What would it mean if we are "friendly" with the world? Listen to the words of James.
You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. James 4:4 NIV
We all want to be liked. That's the reason the "I'm - OK - you;re - OK" philosophy became so popular. We have learned to "not make waves," but God wants some wave-makers, some folks like Jason and the Christian brothers in Thessalonica who were dragged into the street with the following accusation:
Acts 17:6-7
These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar's decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus. Acts 17:6-7 NIV
God is looking for those who will serve Him no matter what, those who don't care what the world thinks about them, those who don't need to be politically correct, who don't have to be loved by the world. He wants to pour out His blessing on those who are satisfied with His love.
The young woman in this video certainly challenges us to be willing to be hated for Christ's sake. May God stir our hearts through her challenge. Does the world hate you? "Are you willing to be hated?"
If you were blessed by the video above then you won't want to miss part two included here. Gianna Jessen has certainly stirred my heart.
May we be stirred and changed, and rise to challenge we are given to glorify God!
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Renewing our National Strength
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done. - Ronald Reagan
If you're afraid of the future, then get out of the way, stand aside. The people of this country are ready to move again. - Ronald Reagan
He motivated a nation to triumph over the difficulties of the day and handed the next administration an America that was strong and proud! We faced the the difficulties head on, and even though the results of his economic policies weren't immediate, we rallied and pulled out of the slump we were in, and Bill Clinton inherited a recovering economy for which he gladly (albeit wrongfully) took full credit. The Reagan economic rebound was such that in spite of all Clinton's character flaws, the people celebrated by re-electing Clinton for a second term. We survived eight years of the Clinton's because of Ronald Reagan's leadership.
Today our nation faces it's greatest challenge ever. Where is the Ronald Reagan of this new millennium? It certainly isn't Barak Obama. He has taken us further in the wrong direction than any other president in American History, and at an alarming cost! Can we recover? Let me share another Reagan quote.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. - Ronald Reagan
Yes, we can recover, but I believe this November is critical! Let's get out the vote, and take our country back for FREEDOM!
Listen to this awesome message from Reagan himself, and pray for America! May we renew our National Strength.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Ken Raggio: Angels and Holy Smoke
My wife Crystal has been searching the internet for a song she remembers by the Rivialtime Choir. As she was searching she came across a site with this article by Pastor Ken Raggio in Texas. He had been in the Choir while in College, but afterwards went to Texas to pastor. This article was such a blessing that I have re-posted it here.
Ken Raggio: Angels and Holy Smoke: "A Modern Tale of Signs, Wonders and Miracles By Ken Raggio
In 1984, my young family and I moved to a little town in Central Texas to assume the pastorate of a small church congregation of about 50 people. It was a cowboy community, as ranching was the primary industry. The county was inhabited by 4,000 people, 5,000 head of cattle, and 10,000 hogs. The two largest employers were a feed mill and a manufacturer of western-style leather belts.
We worked hard and long for the first year or two, trying to win the hearts of the people, and begin an outreach into the community. I confess that I was a city-slicker far out of my element. I knew nothing of riding horses, hunting deer, running herds of angora goats, milk dairies or hog farms.
My only specialty was having church. I could preach and teach and sing and make music. We prayed and asked God to help us reach lost souls and build a church.
I purchased a weekly time-slot on the local AM radio station so I could broadcast a thirty minute program every Sunday morning. Since there was only one radio station in the county, I had a captive audience. The radio station scheduled my Pentecostal preaching right before the local Church of Christ minister. After several weeks on the air, I happened to leave the radio on one morning after my program concluded. I discovered that the Church of Christ minister was using his thirty minutes every Sunday to attempt to refute everything I had just said on my earlier time-slot. It became a real challenge to prepare the most convincing program I could each week that could not be effectively refuted.
One Saturday night, I went into the church alone to record the thirty-minute program for the next morning's broadcast. It was almost midnight when I cued up the tape to record that program. I said a prayer, made some announcements, played a recorded song, and then preached a twenty-minute sermon. Every week, when I finished the task, I would get in my car and drive a few blocks over to the radio station and drop off the tape-recorded program for the next morning's broadcast.
But that night, something very unusual happened. Since it was late, and I was in the building alone, I only turned on one row of lights, which only dimly lit the auditorium. My work-station was at the audio-recording equipment located in the sound booth in the back corner of the auditorium.
As I preached the sermon onto the tape, I felt the inspiration and Presence of the Lord as I spoke. When I finished the thirty-minute program, I stopped the tape and pressed the rewind button.
I looked up toward the pulpit and the platform. When I did, I saw movement. There was a door to the outside located on the left side of the stage. I saw a row of angels walk through the unopened door and walk across the front of the auditorium and stand as if they were soldiers at attention. They were in a shadowy, spirit-form. I watched as one of the angels walked back toward the door, then turned up the aisle along the wall. He came to the third-from-the-last pew on that row and stopped. He stood at the end of that pew for what seemed like a few minutes. Then he and all the other angels vanished.
I sat in the sound booth dumbfounded. I did not know what I had just witnessed. I could not imagine why they had come, or what they were doing. I prayed and asked God to tell me what I should think about what I had just seen.
After a while, I took the tape recording out of the machine, went to my car, drove to the radio station and dropped it off in the front office.
As I drove home, I questioned the meaning of the angelic visitors. I decided that I would pay particular attention on Sunday morning to whoever sat in the pew where the angel had stood. That place on the pew was not normally occupied, so I was curious to see who, if anyone, would sit there the next morning in the church service.
The Sunday morning schedule consisted of two segments. The first hour was for Sunday School. All ages were divided into classes, and I taught the Adult Bible Class in the auditorium. At the end of the first hour, all the classes were dismissed, and everyone came into the auditorium for a worship service of singing and preaching.
During the Sunday School Class in the first hour, nobody sat on the special pew. I felt a little anxious about that. But when people began to come into the auditorium from their classes, the church pianist sat down on the end of that pew. She had never sit there before during a service. As the morning worship service began, I spoke to her from the pulpit. "Sister Neita, I want to tell you that I have been waiting all morning to see who would sit in that pew today, because last night, I saw the angel of the Lord standing at the end of that pew. I do not know for certain what it means, but I believe that he left a blessing for whoever sat in that pew. We will just wait and see what happens." With that, we opened the service with praise and worship.
That night, in the Sunday evening service, Sister Neita's 76-year-old father came to church. That was really big news, because for her entire lifetime, she had been trying to get her father to come to church with her, and he had refused. She and her mother had been faithful to God for all those years without the support of her father. He never did like church, and would never come.
But that night, he sat on the back pew, and lifted his hands in worship when the rest of the congregation worshipped. He listened carefully to the sermon as it was preached. At the end of the service, when the invitation was given to come to the altar and pray, Horice walked down the aisle, knelt at the altar, and wept bitterly as he repented of his sins and gave his heart to God. Suddenly, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave him the utterance.
When that happened, the entire congregation "went wild" praising and worshipping God, for indeed a notable miracle had just happened before their eyes. Sister Neita and her mother wept and praised God when they saw him born of the Spirit that night. The very next Sunday, he was back in Church again. This time, he presented himself for water baptism. After praying for more than forty years for God to save him, his wife and daughter stood and watched as I baptized him in the name of Jesus for the remission of his sins. He came up out of the water, again speaking in tongues, worshipping God and weeping for joy. That was one of the most exciting conversions that little church had ever seen.
The news of Horice's conversion traveled all over town. Nobody could believe that old Horice had gotten religion. He seemed the most unlikely person. But God knew his heart, and the angel of the Lord came to minister to that family that year. In the months following, I saw both him and his wife receive miraculous healing of acute heart ailments, as prayer was made in their home. He had been at the point of death on several occasions, but was strengthened, and enjoyed several more years of good health. Horice became a faithful saint, and often testified about how thankful he was that God had mercy on him and saved his soul.
Horice's conversion seemed to be only the beginning of the greatest revival that church had ever seen in its 50-year history.
I received a phone call from my Pastor, John Harrell. He told me that there was a man in his congregation who was having much success teaching home Bible studies to new prospects. A high percentage of his prospects were coming to church and being born again. He suggested that I should invite him to come to our church and instruct my congregation in how to conduct effective home Bible studies. I eagerly accepted his suggestion, and made the phone call to schedule a three-day seminar to begin the very next Sunday.
I spent several days that week in fasting and prayer for the success of those meetings. On Sunday afternoon, the guest minister arrived, and we prepared for the Sunday evening service to begin at 6 PM.
Before the service began that night, one of the saints came to me with a special request for prayer. Her husband's brother and family were visiting in the service that night. She told me that their 10-year-old daughter had gone blind, and asked that we have special prayer for her if we thought it was appropriate. I told her that we would.
During the first part of the service, I led the congregation in singing and worship. When the time came to introduce the speaker, I whispered to him that we had a special request for prayer. I quickly told him the details, and gave him the names of the girl and her parents.
As soon as he stepped to the pulpit to speak to us, he went directly to the matter of praying for the little girl. "Arthur and Rosa, would you like to bring your little daughter forward so we can pray for her tonight?" Rosa stepped out into the aisle with her blind daughter, and they began to walk to the front of the building.
Suddenly, one of the saints began to deliver a message in tongues, (as the Apostle Paul taught about in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11; 14:22). After the message in tongues was given, another saint interpreted the message. The Spirit said, "I am Jehovah Rapha of the Old Testament - the Lord that Healeth. I am Jesus Christ of the New (Testament). I took thirty-nine stripes for your healing, and tonight I will heal you."
The little girl screamed out, "I CAN SEE!! I can see!"
Before prayer was even made, God performed an amazing miracle of healing for 10-year-old Lori. Spontaneous praise rose up in the congregation. The people lifted their hands and their voices and wept as they worshipped God for the notable miracle they had just seen.
The minister walked down the aisle toward the child and her mother. He laid his hands on the mother's head, and she began to speak in other tongues as God filled her with the Holy Ghost. Shortly, he turned and saw the father standing with his hands in the air, weeping and worshiping God. He walked over and laid his hand on the young dad's head and he also began to speak in other tongues as God filled him with the Holy Ghost.
That night was the beginning of a great wave of blessings that swept over that city for more than a year.
The next day, on Monday, they took the little girl to the doctor and confirmed that she had indeed received a miraculous healing. Her best eye had 20-20 vision. Her acute glaucoma had disappeared. The twitching that she had had for so long had stopped. She could see perfectly, and could even read again. She did not even need glasses.
The word spread quickly among her family and friends.
We never did finish that seminar. Instead of having a seminar, we began to have evangelistic services. Relatives of the "miracle girl" came to church Monday night, and six adult members of that family came forward to repent of their sins and give their lives to God. All six were filled with the Holy Ghost that night and spoke in tongues as the Spirit of the Lord came upon them.
Several teenage boys were sitting on the front row that night. As he preached his sermon, the minister suddenly discerned, without having been told, that one of them had been suffering for some time with a leg injury. He walked over to the teenager and said, "When you go to the doctor this week to have it examined, your leg is going to be perfectly well."
The minister had no other way of knowing, except by the Spirit, what he had just said. But the facts were that the young man had been seriously injured on his shin in a sporting accident. His leg had been severely infected for several months. He had been going to a wound clinic for treatments, and the treatments were not working very well. His lower leg had been in bandages for months, and he was scheduled to go back to the doctor the very next morning to have another treatment.
However, when he went to the doctor the next day, they found as they removed the bandages, that his leg was perfectly healed without even a scar. The news of that miracle quickly spread through his family and around town. That night, several more new faces were in the congregation.
One young couple came with their baby, who was less than a year old. For months, their infant had suffered with a horrible skin disease that looked like the chicken pox. The poor child looked awful, and the parents were obviously stressed from the ordeal. The baby had spent days in the local hospital without any improvement. Then she was taken to a regional hospital, where more tests and treatments were performed, still with no improvement. Finally, the child was taken to a large hospital in Fort Worth, where even more tests and more treatments were done.
The baby's grandmother came with the parents and stood for prayer. We anointed the child with oil, in the name of the Lord, and prayed (according to James 5:14-15). The entire congregation prayed the prayer of faith that night.
At 8 o'clock the next morning, the doorbell rang at the parsonage. I answered the door to see the same grandmother, mother, and baby standing there. The baby looked like a brand-new child. The horrible splotches had completely disappeared overnight, and the baby's skin was perfectly healed from head to toe. It was an amazing sight to behold. Both the grandmother and the mother laughed and cried as they rejoiced over what God had done.
What began as a three-night seminar, became instead a six-week series of revival services. FORTY-THREE MEMBERS of the little blind girl's extended family came to church, repented of their sins, received the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, and were baptized in water in Jesus' name for the remission of their sins.
It was a glorious time. During that time, I walked into the church one Sunday morning to prepare the building for the morning services. As I unlocked the doors and turned on the lights, I saw that the auditorium was filled with smoke. I was alarmed to see it, and wondered what was going wrong. It appeared that something was on fire. I quickly went through the entire building looking for the source of the smoke. At last, the only cause I could imagine was that the air conditioning system must be pumping smoke into the auditorium.
But I checked all the air conditioning systems, and there was no problem anywhere with the air conditioning. Suddenly, it occurred to me that there was no odor, and no physical source of the smoke.
That is when I realized that the presence of the Lord was in the place. This, I thought, must be the Shekinah - the glory cloud, like Moses saw in the Tabernacle.
The miracles and healings and conversions continued unabated. Over the next few months, over one hundred and twenty people were baptized and were filled with the Holy Ghost in that little church. The congregation grew from 50 to 125 in attendance. The stories of the miracles we saw could fill a book.
I was attending a ministers' conference a few years later, and listened with amazement to a minister from a large Pentecostal church on the East Coast tell a story that sounded amazingly similar to ours.
He told about being alone in his church auditorium on a Saturday night as he walked the aisles and prayed for God's blessings on the Sunday services. As he stood in the low lights of an empty auditorium, he saw a line of angels enter the front of the building and walk around the entire building. He stood in silence as they moved for several minutes, then suddenly disappeared.
"God! What am I seeing?" he asked. "Those are the angels of revival," came the answer.
In the year following that occurrence, that congregation experienced the greatest influx of new souls in its entire history. Over 800 people were baptized in Jesus' name and received the gift of the Holy Ghost that year.
So the days of miracles are over?
Don't you believe it.
I've seen angels and holy smoke.
Ken Raggio: Angels and Holy Smoke: "A Modern Tale of Signs, Wonders and Miracles By Ken Raggio
In 1984, my young family and I moved to a little town in Central Texas to assume the pastorate of a small church congregation of about 50 people. It was a cowboy community, as ranching was the primary industry. The county was inhabited by 4,000 people, 5,000 head of cattle, and 10,000 hogs. The two largest employers were a feed mill and a manufacturer of western-style leather belts.
We worked hard and long for the first year or two, trying to win the hearts of the people, and begin an outreach into the community. I confess that I was a city-slicker far out of my element. I knew nothing of riding horses, hunting deer, running herds of angora goats, milk dairies or hog farms.
My only specialty was having church. I could preach and teach and sing and make music. We prayed and asked God to help us reach lost souls and build a church.
I purchased a weekly time-slot on the local AM radio station so I could broadcast a thirty minute program every Sunday morning. Since there was only one radio station in the county, I had a captive audience. The radio station scheduled my Pentecostal preaching right before the local Church of Christ minister. After several weeks on the air, I happened to leave the radio on one morning after my program concluded. I discovered that the Church of Christ minister was using his thirty minutes every Sunday to attempt to refute everything I had just said on my earlier time-slot. It became a real challenge to prepare the most convincing program I could each week that could not be effectively refuted.
One Saturday night, I went into the church alone to record the thirty-minute program for the next morning's broadcast. It was almost midnight when I cued up the tape to record that program. I said a prayer, made some announcements, played a recorded song, and then preached a twenty-minute sermon. Every week, when I finished the task, I would get in my car and drive a few blocks over to the radio station and drop off the tape-recorded program for the next morning's broadcast.
But that night, something very unusual happened. Since it was late, and I was in the building alone, I only turned on one row of lights, which only dimly lit the auditorium. My work-station was at the audio-recording equipment located in the sound booth in the back corner of the auditorium.
As I preached the sermon onto the tape, I felt the inspiration and Presence of the Lord as I spoke. When I finished the thirty-minute program, I stopped the tape and pressed the rewind button.
I looked up toward the pulpit and the platform. When I did, I saw movement. There was a door to the outside located on the left side of the stage. I saw a row of angels walk through the unopened door and walk across the front of the auditorium and stand as if they were soldiers at attention. They were in a shadowy, spirit-form. I watched as one of the angels walked back toward the door, then turned up the aisle along the wall. He came to the third-from-the-last pew on that row and stopped. He stood at the end of that pew for what seemed like a few minutes. Then he and all the other angels vanished.
I sat in the sound booth dumbfounded. I did not know what I had just witnessed. I could not imagine why they had come, or what they were doing. I prayed and asked God to tell me what I should think about what I had just seen.
After a while, I took the tape recording out of the machine, went to my car, drove to the radio station and dropped it off in the front office.
As I drove home, I questioned the meaning of the angelic visitors. I decided that I would pay particular attention on Sunday morning to whoever sat in the pew where the angel had stood. That place on the pew was not normally occupied, so I was curious to see who, if anyone, would sit there the next morning in the church service.
The Sunday morning schedule consisted of two segments. The first hour was for Sunday School. All ages were divided into classes, and I taught the Adult Bible Class in the auditorium. At the end of the first hour, all the classes were dismissed, and everyone came into the auditorium for a worship service of singing and preaching.
During the Sunday School Class in the first hour, nobody sat on the special pew. I felt a little anxious about that. But when people began to come into the auditorium from their classes, the church pianist sat down on the end of that pew. She had never sit there before during a service. As the morning worship service began, I spoke to her from the pulpit. "Sister Neita, I want to tell you that I have been waiting all morning to see who would sit in that pew today, because last night, I saw the angel of the Lord standing at the end of that pew. I do not know for certain what it means, but I believe that he left a blessing for whoever sat in that pew. We will just wait and see what happens." With that, we opened the service with praise and worship.
That night, in the Sunday evening service, Sister Neita's 76-year-old father came to church. That was really big news, because for her entire lifetime, she had been trying to get her father to come to church with her, and he had refused. She and her mother had been faithful to God for all those years without the support of her father. He never did like church, and would never come.
But that night, he sat on the back pew, and lifted his hands in worship when the rest of the congregation worshipped. He listened carefully to the sermon as it was preached. At the end of the service, when the invitation was given to come to the altar and pray, Horice walked down the aisle, knelt at the altar, and wept bitterly as he repented of his sins and gave his heart to God. Suddenly, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave him the utterance.
When that happened, the entire congregation "went wild" praising and worshipping God, for indeed a notable miracle had just happened before their eyes. Sister Neita and her mother wept and praised God when they saw him born of the Spirit that night. The very next Sunday, he was back in Church again. This time, he presented himself for water baptism. After praying for more than forty years for God to save him, his wife and daughter stood and watched as I baptized him in the name of Jesus for the remission of his sins. He came up out of the water, again speaking in tongues, worshipping God and weeping for joy. That was one of the most exciting conversions that little church had ever seen.
The news of Horice's conversion traveled all over town. Nobody could believe that old Horice had gotten religion. He seemed the most unlikely person. But God knew his heart, and the angel of the Lord came to minister to that family that year. In the months following, I saw both him and his wife receive miraculous healing of acute heart ailments, as prayer was made in their home. He had been at the point of death on several occasions, but was strengthened, and enjoyed several more years of good health. Horice became a faithful saint, and often testified about how thankful he was that God had mercy on him and saved his soul.
Horice's conversion seemed to be only the beginning of the greatest revival that church had ever seen in its 50-year history.
I received a phone call from my Pastor, John Harrell. He told me that there was a man in his congregation who was having much success teaching home Bible studies to new prospects. A high percentage of his prospects were coming to church and being born again. He suggested that I should invite him to come to our church and instruct my congregation in how to conduct effective home Bible studies. I eagerly accepted his suggestion, and made the phone call to schedule a three-day seminar to begin the very next Sunday.
I spent several days that week in fasting and prayer for the success of those meetings. On Sunday afternoon, the guest minister arrived, and we prepared for the Sunday evening service to begin at 6 PM.
Before the service began that night, one of the saints came to me with a special request for prayer. Her husband's brother and family were visiting in the service that night. She told me that their 10-year-old daughter had gone blind, and asked that we have special prayer for her if we thought it was appropriate. I told her that we would.
During the first part of the service, I led the congregation in singing and worship. When the time came to introduce the speaker, I whispered to him that we had a special request for prayer. I quickly told him the details, and gave him the names of the girl and her parents.
As soon as he stepped to the pulpit to speak to us, he went directly to the matter of praying for the little girl. "Arthur and Rosa, would you like to bring your little daughter forward so we can pray for her tonight?" Rosa stepped out into the aisle with her blind daughter, and they began to walk to the front of the building.
Suddenly, one of the saints began to deliver a message in tongues, (as the Apostle Paul taught about in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11; 14:22). After the message in tongues was given, another saint interpreted the message. The Spirit said, "I am Jehovah Rapha of the Old Testament - the Lord that Healeth. I am Jesus Christ of the New (Testament). I took thirty-nine stripes for your healing, and tonight I will heal you."
The little girl screamed out, "I CAN SEE!! I can see!"
Before prayer was even made, God performed an amazing miracle of healing for 10-year-old Lori. Spontaneous praise rose up in the congregation. The people lifted their hands and their voices and wept as they worshipped God for the notable miracle they had just seen.
The minister walked down the aisle toward the child and her mother. He laid his hands on the mother's head, and she began to speak in other tongues as God filled her with the Holy Ghost. Shortly, he turned and saw the father standing with his hands in the air, weeping and worshiping God. He walked over and laid his hand on the young dad's head and he also began to speak in other tongues as God filled him with the Holy Ghost.
That night was the beginning of a great wave of blessings that swept over that city for more than a year.
The next day, on Monday, they took the little girl to the doctor and confirmed that she had indeed received a miraculous healing. Her best eye had 20-20 vision. Her acute glaucoma had disappeared. The twitching that she had had for so long had stopped. She could see perfectly, and could even read again. She did not even need glasses.
The word spread quickly among her family and friends.
We never did finish that seminar. Instead of having a seminar, we began to have evangelistic services. Relatives of the "miracle girl" came to church Monday night, and six adult members of that family came forward to repent of their sins and give their lives to God. All six were filled with the Holy Ghost that night and spoke in tongues as the Spirit of the Lord came upon them.
Several teenage boys were sitting on the front row that night. As he preached his sermon, the minister suddenly discerned, without having been told, that one of them had been suffering for some time with a leg injury. He walked over to the teenager and said, "When you go to the doctor this week to have it examined, your leg is going to be perfectly well."
The minister had no other way of knowing, except by the Spirit, what he had just said. But the facts were that the young man had been seriously injured on his shin in a sporting accident. His leg had been severely infected for several months. He had been going to a wound clinic for treatments, and the treatments were not working very well. His lower leg had been in bandages for months, and he was scheduled to go back to the doctor the very next morning to have another treatment.
However, when he went to the doctor the next day, they found as they removed the bandages, that his leg was perfectly healed without even a scar. The news of that miracle quickly spread through his family and around town. That night, several more new faces were in the congregation.
One young couple came with their baby, who was less than a year old. For months, their infant had suffered with a horrible skin disease that looked like the chicken pox. The poor child looked awful, and the parents were obviously stressed from the ordeal. The baby had spent days in the local hospital without any improvement. Then she was taken to a regional hospital, where more tests and treatments were performed, still with no improvement. Finally, the child was taken to a large hospital in Fort Worth, where even more tests and more treatments were done.
The baby's grandmother came with the parents and stood for prayer. We anointed the child with oil, in the name of the Lord, and prayed (according to James 5:14-15). The entire congregation prayed the prayer of faith that night.
At 8 o'clock the next morning, the doorbell rang at the parsonage. I answered the door to see the same grandmother, mother, and baby standing there. The baby looked like a brand-new child. The horrible splotches had completely disappeared overnight, and the baby's skin was perfectly healed from head to toe. It was an amazing sight to behold. Both the grandmother and the mother laughed and cried as they rejoiced over what God had done.
What began as a three-night seminar, became instead a six-week series of revival services. FORTY-THREE MEMBERS of the little blind girl's extended family came to church, repented of their sins, received the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, and were baptized in water in Jesus' name for the remission of their sins.
It was a glorious time. During that time, I walked into the church one Sunday morning to prepare the building for the morning services. As I unlocked the doors and turned on the lights, I saw that the auditorium was filled with smoke. I was alarmed to see it, and wondered what was going wrong. It appeared that something was on fire. I quickly went through the entire building looking for the source of the smoke. At last, the only cause I could imagine was that the air conditioning system must be pumping smoke into the auditorium.
But I checked all the air conditioning systems, and there was no problem anywhere with the air conditioning. Suddenly, it occurred to me that there was no odor, and no physical source of the smoke.
That is when I realized that the presence of the Lord was in the place. This, I thought, must be the Shekinah - the glory cloud, like Moses saw in the Tabernacle.
The miracles and healings and conversions continued unabated. Over the next few months, over one hundred and twenty people were baptized and were filled with the Holy Ghost in that little church. The congregation grew from 50 to 125 in attendance. The stories of the miracles we saw could fill a book.
I was attending a ministers' conference a few years later, and listened with amazement to a minister from a large Pentecostal church on the East Coast tell a story that sounded amazingly similar to ours.
He told about being alone in his church auditorium on a Saturday night as he walked the aisles and prayed for God's blessings on the Sunday services. As he stood in the low lights of an empty auditorium, he saw a line of angels enter the front of the building and walk around the entire building. He stood in silence as they moved for several minutes, then suddenly disappeared.
"God! What am I seeing?" he asked. "Those are the angels of revival," came the answer.
In the year following that occurrence, that congregation experienced the greatest influx of new souls in its entire history. Over 800 people were baptized in Jesus' name and received the gift of the Holy Ghost that year.
So the days of miracles are over?
Don't you believe it.
I've seen angels and holy smoke.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Unforgettable Morning
In you O Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame. Rescue me and deliver me in your righteousness; turn your ear to me and save me. Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go; give the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Deliver me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of evil and cruel men.
The Psalmist begins describing the need for refuge and rescue. Then in the 14th verse of this same chapter he writes,
But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more.
Today, I encourage you to lay hold of hope! God has a plan for you to give you hope and a future!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Change We Need?
Notice that we did have some clues! One of the most obvious was the Obama/Ayers association. Why didn't people take this stuff serious? The launching pad for Obama's political career was Ayers' living room! Why would someone like Ayers, whose group (the Weather Underground) was bombing the United States, be promoting the political career of Barrack Obama? Both seem to be clearly set on fundamental transformation of the United States, but this is not "change we need!"
Follow the trail. Ayers' partner, Jeff Jones, heads the Apollo Alliance in New York, and it is the Apollo Allliance that was largely responsible for writing the stimulus bill. Yes they are all about change all right, but this kind of change is the beginning of Socialism, and the end of America as we know it. People who are bombing America are not the people you put your confidence in to guide us into a secure future. These people are about the demise of the America we know and love!
It's time to wake up, and rescue our nation while we have a window of opportunity to do something! We just thought we needed change before. Now we have come to a place of desperation. The good news is that it's not too late, and to borrow another phrase, "Yes, we can" take our country back!
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Another Great Awakening in America?
Now, I applaud Glenn Beck for all he is doing to restore the values of nation, which when you look closely, are rooted in the Judeo-Christian values that have made our nation great. Still we must be clear that just any faith will not do! Our faith must be rooted in Truth!
This past weekend his guests were: Rabbi Daniel Lapin of the American Alliance of Christians and Jews, Pastor Miles McPherson of "The Rock Church," and the Decorated Vietnam Veteran, Dave Roever. It was a great program, and I encourage you to see it. If you missed it on Fox, you can see it at this site, www.watchglennbeck.com. Please take time to see this video of the September 3rd program. You'll be glad you did.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
