A "PURGE" Is COMING!

We are not ready for the coming of Christ! 

Is this the Church triumphant?...

Covetous, divorcing, depressed, worldly-minded?...

Grasping for materialism and success?...

Competitive, lukewarm, adulterous, rich and increased with goods?...

Unaware of spiritual blindness and poverty, pleasure-loving, recreation-minded?...

Consumed with sports, politics, and power?...

Is this the Church Jesus is coming for?...

Simply coping, filled with fear and anxiety...? Satisfied only to have good health and happiness? 

My Bible says He is coming back for an overcoming Church!

A Church without spot or wrinkle!

A people whose affections are on things above! 

A people with clean hands and pure hearts.

A people who are looking for His coming!

A people with a "new Jerusalem state of mind." 

The question is no longer, What can my faith get me?

What miracle will He perform for me?

The question now is -"How shall I stand before Him?"

How shall I make it at the judgment? "who shall stand when He appeareth?" (Malachi 3:2 KJV) 

The question is no longer, "How do I feel - how do I get happiness?

How do I get the desire of my heart? 

The question Is- "Can I withstand that moment when I stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ?"

How can I withstand when I've lived so carelessly, so selfishly, so neglectful of His great salvation?

The central issue now has nothing to do with this world at all. 

The issue is-"HAVE I NEGLECTED CHRIST IN THIS MIDNIGHT HOUR?" 

The purge is going to begin in the pulpit..."He shall purify the
sons of Levi..." (Malachi 3:3 KJV)

God is going to accomplish that by "turning up the heat"...

God is going to make things so hot, so fiery, so intense, God's men will be driven to their knees!

This is the fire of the Holy Ghost!

It is the fire of persecution.

It is the fire of tribulation.

The fire of unbelievable hardships, ridicule, gossip, financial problems.

He is going to shake everything that can be shaken!

He is going to shake, and scrub, and burn, and purge - and purify! 

No man or woman of God will escape the purging!

God is determined to get all the dross and filth out of us.

The purge will spread from the pulpit to the pew!

Get ready, saints!

God is getting ready to expose all sin, all adultery, all foolishness!

The Holy Ghost is going to reprove us of sin.

How can you play games when God puts you in His crucible and turns up the fire?

Your Holy Ghost baptism is going to have some fire put to it now! 

Malachi said-"...the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven: and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up..." (Malachi 4:1 KJV) 

God also promises to bring down the strongholds of the enemy!

He is going to once and for all let the devil and the world know
who has the power! 

If God is about to do all that the prophets predicted He would -
WHAT A GLORIOUS FUTURE JUST AHEAD! 

A purged, purified ministry! 

A Church that God is calling back to repentance and holiness. 

A people washed, cleansed - offering praises in true righteousness. 

A revival among our young people! Drug strongholds coming down!

Alcohol and divorce no longer prevalent among God's people. 

The sound of prayer-intercession! 

A people of God who will discern between the holy and the unholy! 

Everywhere, God's people turning again to the Word. 

A tested, tried people, once again devoted to the Person of Jesus Christ! 

His Person being lifted up to draw all men to Him! 

Christ no longer the stranger in our midst, but CROWNED - PRE-EMINENT! 

A Pentecost that truly exalts the name and power of Jesus Christ, the Lord of all. 

~David Wilkerson~

God Will Answer

His own Spirit has wrought this desire in us, and therefore He will answer it.

It is His own life within which prompts the cry, and therefore He will hear it. 

Those who fear Him are men under the holiest influence, and, therefore, their desire is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Like Daniel, they are men of desires, and the LORD will cause them to realize their aspirations.
 
Holy desires are grace in the blade, and the heavenly Husbandman will cultivate them till they come to the full corn in the ear. 

God-fearing men desire to be holy, to be useful, to be a blessing to others, and so to honor their LORD. 

They desire supplies for their need...

Help under burdens...

Guidance in perplexity...

Deliverance in distress...

And sometimes this desire is so strong and their case so pressing that they cry out in agony like little children in pain...

And then the LORD works most comprehensively and does all that is needful according to this Word and will save them.
 
Yes, if we fear God, we have nothing else to fear...

If we cry to the LORD, our salvation is certain.
 
Let the reader lay this text on his tongue and keep it in his mouth all the day, and it will be to him as a wafer made with honey.

~Charles Spurgeon~

The Fire Will Test Each One's Work Of What Sort It Is

1Co 3:13  Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.

There are many things to which the name of the Lord is being affixed which are being constructed, and which appear fine and great and like “the Church,"...

But the twofold reality is neither in the builders or the buildings...

They are destined to collapse when God’s hurricane and fire test every man’s work. 

Good works: philanthropy, hospitality, reform, education, religion, relief, etc. may be the products, or by-products, of what is called “Christian civilization,”...

And things for which to be profoundly grateful...

But let us not confuse these with “a new creation,” regeneration, a being “born from above.” 

The Church is nothing which man can build by any resource in himself personally or collectively.

The Church is an organism, not an organization. 

Behold, I show you a mystery, we are members of His flesh and of His bones...

Build that, if you can! Launch that; organize that; “run” that! 

It cannot be done.

It is the spontaneous outworking of spiritual forces released, in the acceptance by faith of tremendous facts concerning Christ...

Which facts are proclaimed out of experience in the power of the Holy Ghost...

Not the theological Christ...

Not the doctrinal Christ...

Not the Christ of the letter, much less the Jesus of history...

But the Christ of eternity in all the meaning of His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension into the Throne of God revealed in the heart by the Holy Spirit. 

This alone is authority to preach, to serve, to occupy position, to “build” in relation to the house of God.

It is folly to spend time and strength otherwise. 

It is wisdom to labor on this foundation.

~T. Austin Sparks~

Satan's Attempts To Kill The Christ

When the Lord Jesus came down to earth, Satan knew his mission. 

He knew that the Lord Jesus was the Son of God...

And when he saw Him as an infant in the manger, he thought if he could kill Him and get Him in the bonds of death, what a fine thing it would be!

So he stirred up the spirit of Herod to kill Him; but Herod missed his mark...

And many times Satan attempted to put the personal existence of Christ in danger, so that he might get Christ to die...

Poor fool as he was, he did not know that when Christ died he would bruise the devil's head. 

Once, you remember, when Christ was in the synagogue, the devil stirred up the people, and made them angry...

And he thought, "Oh! what a glorious thing it would be if I could kill this man...

Then there would be an end of Him, and I would reign supreme forever.

So he got the people to take Him to the edge of the cliff, and he gloated over the thought that surely now He would be thrown down headfirst. 

But Christ escaped. 

He tried to starve Him, he tried to drown Him...

He was in the desert without food, and He was on the sea in a storm...

But there was no starving or drowning Him...

And Satan no doubt panted for His blood, and longed that He would die. 

At last the day arrived; it was transmitted to the court of hell that at last Christ would die. 

They rung their bells with hellish elation and joy. "He will die now," he said; "Judas has taken the thirty pieces of silver."

Let those Scribes and Pharisees get Him, they will no more let Him go than the spider will let go of a poor unfortunate fly. 

He is as good as dead. 

And the devil laughed with excitement, when he saw the Savior stand before Pilate's judgment seat. 

And when it was said, "Let Him be crucified," then Satan’s joy knew no limits, except the limit set by his own misery. 

As far as he could, he rejoiced in what was to him a delightful thought, that the Lord of glory was about to die. 

In death, as Christ was being observed by angels, He also was seen by the demons too...

And that dreary march from Pilate's palace to the cross, was one which the demons watched with extraordinary interest.

And when they saw Him on the cross, there stood the exulting fiend, Satan, smiling to himself...

Ah! I have the King of Glory now in my control; I have the power of death, and I have the power over the Lord Jesus.

He exerted that power, until the Lord Jesus had to cry out in bitter anguish, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

But ah! how short lived was hellish victory.

How brief was the Satanic triumph!

He died; and "It is finished!" shook the gates of hell.

Down from the cross the conqueror leaped, pursued the fiend with thunderbolts of wrath...

Swift to the darkness of hell the fiend flew, and swift descending went the conqueror after him...

And we may conceive him exclaiming..."Traitor!

This thunderbolt will find and pierce you through, Though under hell's deepest, darkest wave you seek to go, to find a sheltering grave.

And He seize him...chained him to his chariot wheel; dragged him up the steeps of glory; angels shouting all the while, "He ascended on high, He led captives in his train and gave gifts to men."

Now, devil, you said that you would overcome me, when I came to die.

Satan, I defy you, and laugh you to scorn!

My master overcame you, and I will overcome you yet.

You say you will overcome the saint, do you?

You could not overcome the saint's Master, and you will not overcome him.

You once thought you had conquered Jesus...you were bitterly deceived.

Ah! Satan, you may think you will overcome the little faith and the faint heart; but you are wondrously mistaken...

For we will assuredly tread Satan under our feet shortly...

And even in our last moment on earth, with fearful odds against us, we will be "more than conquerors through Him that loved us."

~Charles Spurgeon~

The Cross Of Popular Evangelicalism!

                                                       
The cross of popular evangelicalism is Not the cross of the New Testament.

It is, rather-a new bright ornament upon the bosom of a Self-assured and Carnal Christianity.

The Old cross Slew men...

The New Cross Entertains them...

The Old cross Humbled men..

The New Cross Amuses them...

The Old cross Destroyed Confidence in the Flesh...

The New Cross Encourages it...

The Old cross brought tears and blood...

The New Cross Brings Laughter.

The flesh, smiling and confident, preaches and sings about the cross. 

Before that cross it bows, and toward that cross it points with carefully staged histrionics...

But upon that cross it will not die...

And the reproach of that cross, it stubbornly refuses to bear.

We must do something about the cross, and only one of two things we can do...

Flee from it, or Die upon it.

The man who takes up the cross no longer controls his destiny...

He lost control, when he picked up his cross. 

That cross immediately became to him an all-absorbing interest, an overwhelming passion. 

No matter what he may desire to do, there is but one thing he can do...

That is, move on toward the place of crucifixion!

Gal 6:14  But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

~A. W. Tozer~

So Far As We Attain To This-~We Are Secure From Disappointment!

One of the greatest privileges and brightest ornaments of our profession, is a sweet acquiescence in the Lord's will...

Founded in a persuasion of His wisdom, holiness, sovereignty and goodness. 

So far as we attain to this--we are secure from disappointment!

Our own limited views and short-sighted purposes and desires may be, and will be, often over-ruled. 

But then our main and leading desire, that the will of the Lord may be done must be accomplished.

How highly does it befit us, both as creatures and as sinners-to submit to the appointments of our Maker! 

And how necessary it is to our peace!

This great attainment is too often unthought of, and overlooked.

We are prone to fix our attention upon the second causes and immediate instruments of events...

Forgetting that whatever befalls us is according to His purpose...

And therefore must be right and seasonable in itself, and shall be productive of good in the final outcome.

From hence arise impatience, resentment, and secret repinings-which are not only sinful, but tormenting.

Whereas, if all things are in His hand...

If the very hairs of our head are numbered...

If every event, great and small, is under the direction of His providence and purpose...

And if He has a wise, holy, and gracious end in view, to which everything that happens is subordinate and subservient...

Then we have nothing to do, but with patience and humility to follow as He leads, and cheerfully to expect a blessed outcome.

Php 4:12  I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

~John Newton~

God Always Hears

Mic 7:7  Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.

Friends may be unfaithful...

But the LORD will not turn away from the gracious soul...

On the contrary, He will hear all its desires. 

The prophet says,  Keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom. 

A man's enemies are the men of his own house.

This is a wretched state of affairs...

But even in such a case the Best Friend remains true, and we may tell Him all our grief.

Our wisdom is to look unto the LORD and not to quarrel with men or women. 

If our loving appeals are disregarded by our relatives, let us wait upon the God of our salvation, for He will hear us.

He will hear us all the more because of the unkindness and oppression of others...

And we shall soon have reason to cry, "Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy!"

Because God is the living God, He can hear; because He is a loving God...

He will hear; because He is our covenant God...

He has bound Him-self to hear us. 

If we can each one speak of Him as "My God," we may with absolute certainty say, "My God will hear me."

Come, then, O bleeding heart, and let thy sorrows tell themselves out to the LORD thy God!

I will bow the knee in secret and inwardly whisper, "My God will hear me."

~Charles Spurgeon~

Deliverance From The Snare

Psalm 91:3  Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.

God delivers his people from the snare of the fowler in two senses...

From, and out of...

First, he delivers them from the snare-does not let them enter it...

And secondly, if they should be caught therein, he delivers them out of it. 

The first promise is the most precious to some; the second is the best to others.

He shall deliver thee from the snare.

How?

Trouble is often the means whereby God delivers us. 

God knows that our backsliding will soon end in our destruction, and he in mercy sends the rod. 

We say, “Lord, why is this?”...

Not knowing that our trouble has been the means of delivering us from far greater evil. 

Many have been thus saved from ruin by their sorrows and their crosses...

These have frightened the birds from the net.

At other times, God keeps his people from the snare of the fowler by giving them great spiritual strength...

So that when they are tempted to do evil they say, “How can I do this great wickedness, and
sin against God?”

But what a blessed thing it is that if the believer shall, in an evil hour, come into the net, yet God will bring him out of it! 

O backslider, be cast down, but do not despair.

Wanderer though thou hast been, hear what thy Redeemer saith...

Return, O backsliding children; I will have mercy upon you...

But you say you cannot return, for you are a captive.

Then listen to the promise...“Surely he shall deliver thee out of the snare of the fowler.”

Thou shalt yet be brought out of all evil into which thou hast fallen...

And though thou shalt never cease to repent of thy ways, yet he that hath loved thee will not cast thee away...

He will receive thee, and give thee joy and gladness...

That the bones which he has broken may rejoice.

No bird of paradise shall die in the fowler’s net.

~Charles Spurgeon~

God's Enemies Shall Bow

Exodus 7:5  And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them.  

The ungodly world is hard to teach. 

Egypt does not know Jehovah and therefore dares to set up its idols and even ventures to ask, "Who is the LORD?"

Yet the LORD means to break proud hearts, whether they will or not. 

When His judgments thunder over their heads...

Darken their skies, destroy their harvests, and slay their sons, they begin to discern somewhat of Jehovah's power. 

There will yet be such things done in the earth as shall bring skeptics to their knees. 

Let us not be dismayed because of their blasphemies, for the LORD can take care of His own name, and He will do so in a very effectual manner.

The salvation of His own people was another potent means of making Egypt know that the God of Israel was Jehovah, the living and true God.

No Israelite died by any one of the ten plagues. 

None of the chosen seed were drowned in the Red Sea. 

Even so, the salvation of the elect and the sure glorification of all true believers will make the most obstinate of God's enemies acknowledge that Jehovah, He is the God.

Oh, that His convincing power would go forth by His Holy Spirit in the preaching of the gospel...Till all nations shall bow at the name of Jesus and call Him LORD!

~Charles Spurgeon~

Even The Faintest Call

Why do I not call on His name?

Why do I run to this neighbor and that when God is so near and will hear my faintest call?

Why do I sit down and devise schemes and invent plans! 

Why not at once roll my- self and my burden upon the LORD?

Straightforward is the best runner -- why do I not run at once to the living God?

In vain shall I look for deliverance anywhere else...

But with God I shall find it; for here I have His royal "shall" to make it sure.

I need not ask whether I may call on Him or not, for that word whosoever is a very wide and comprehensive one. 

Whosoever means me, for it means anybody and everybody who calls upon God. 

I will therefore follow the leading of the text and at once call upon the glorious LORD who has made so large a promise.

My case is urgent, and I do not see how I am to be delivered; but this is no business of mine. 

He who makes the promise will find out ways and means of keeping it.

It is mine to obey His commands; it is not mine to direct His counsels. 

I am His servant, not His solicitor. 

I call upon Him, and He will deliver me.

~Charles Spurgeon~

Christ Sometimes Delays His Help

Son 5:6  I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.

The Lord, when He hath given great faith, hath been known to try it by long delayings.

He has suffered His servants voices to echo in their ears as from a brazen sky.

They have knocked at the golden gate, but it has remained unmovable, as though it were rusted upon its hinges.

Like Jeremiah, they have cried, "Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through."

Thus have true saints continued long in patient waiting without reply...

Not because their prayers were not vehement...

Nor because they were unaccepted...

But because it so pleased Him who is a Sovereign, and who gives according to His own pleasure.

If it pleases Him to bid our patience exercise itself, shall He not do as He will with His own!

No prayer is lost.

Praying breath was never spent in vain.

There is no such thing as prayer unanswered or unnoticed by God...

And some things that we count refusals or denials are simply delays.

~H. Bonar~
     
Christ sometimes delays His help that He may try our faith and quicken our prayers. 

The boat may be covered with the waves, and He sleeps on; but He will wake up before it sinks. 

He sleeps, but He never oversleeps; and there are no "too lates" with Him.

~Alexander Maclaren~
     
Be still, sad soul!

Lift thou no passionate cry...

But spread the desert of thy being bare To the full searching of the All-seeing eye...

Wait!

And through dark misgiving, black despair...

God will come down in pity...

And fill the dry Dead place with light, and life, and vernal air.

~J. C. Shairp~

Divine Recompense

Pro 11:25  The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.  

If I carefully consider others, God will consider me...

And in some way or other He will recompense me. 

Let me consider the poor, and the LORD will consider me. 

Let me look after little children, and the LORD will treat me as His child. 

Let me feed His flock, and He will feed me. 

Let me water His garden, and He will make a watered garden of my soul. 

This is the LORD's own promise; 

Be it mine to fulfill the condition and then to expect its fulfillment. 

I may care about myself till I grow morbid...

I may watch over my own feelings till I feel nothing...

And I may lament my own weakness till I grow almost too weak to lament.

It will be far more profitable for me to become unselfish...

And out of love to my LORD Jesus begin to care for the souls of those around me. 

My tank is getting very low; no fresh rain comes to fill it...

What shall l do... 

I will pull up the plug and let its contents run out to water the withering plants around me.

What do I see? 

My cistern seems to fill as it flows. 

A secret spring is at work. 

While all was stagnant, the fresh spring was sealed... 

But as my stock Rows out to water others the LORD thinketh upon me. 

Hallelujah!

~Charles Spurgeon~

Help From Without

Yesterday's promise secured us strength for what we have to do, but this guarantees us aid in cases where we cannot act alone. 

The LORD says, "I will help thee." 

Strength within is supplemented by help without. 

God can raise us up allies in our warfare if so it seems good in His sight...

And even if He does not send us human assistance...

He Himself will be at our side...

And this is better still. 

Our August Ally is better than legions of mortal helpers.

His help is timely...

He is a very present help in time of trouble. 

His help is very wise...

He knows how to give each man help meet and fit for him. 

His help is most effectual, though vain is the help of man. 

His help is more than help, for He bears All the burden and supplies All the need.

The LORD is my helper, I will not fear what man can do unto me.

Because He has already been our help, we feel confidence in Him for the present and the future.

Our prayer is, "LORD, by thou my helper"...

Our experience is, "The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities"...

Our expectation is, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help"...

And our song soon will be, "Thou, LORD, hast holden me."

~Charles Spurgeon~

The Achan Factor

Joshua 7:20  And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done:

Joshua 7:21  When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.

The Achan factor is significant.

There were two things connected with Achan's sin, or which were the forms of expression which that sin took.

There was the wedge of gold, and the Babylonish garment.

The wedge of gold incidentally is of interest, inasmuch as it has been discovered that wedges of gold, not coins, formed the currency of that part of the world at that time.

Business was transacted, and payments were made in this way, and, in a word, credit hung upon these wedges of gold.

It was one of those wedges of gold representing the commercial values of this world which Achan took.

The Babylonish garment, on the other hand, is a foreign element, which has proved to have been a link with a religious system, the Babylonish religious system...

For that Babylonish garment was nothing other than something connected with the system of worship in Babylon.
 
It might have been a garment of a priestess.

The gold was claimed by Jehovah.

When the city was taken it was commanded that the gold should be devoted to the Lord for His purposes...

That is, the Lord laid claim to the gold...

And all the gold was the Lord's property, the Lord's by right.

Achan, therefore, appropriated what belonged to the Lord, and sought to turn it to his own account.

That is what the flesh Always does.

The flesh Always takes to itself the glory that belongs to the Lord.

The flesh is Always taking God's rights from Him.

The flesh is Always putting itself in the place of the Lord.

As to the Babylonish garment: that was a part of the whole system of things which was to be utterly destroyed from the Lord...

And it represented a spiritual order which was in antagonism to God...

A worship which was energized by the god of this world, his religious system, in usurping God's place as God...

And that whole system, with every accompaniment, every feature, was to be utterly destroyed.

But Achan preserved something which was a representation of a spiritual antagonism to God as the only God...

So that Achan's sin was a Very Deep Sin.

You see how inclusive Jericho was, in that its every feature foreshadowed, or represented, what the conquest of the land was to be.

The judgment of Achan's sin showed that God had first rights...

And the flesh must not appropriate what belongs to God...

Must not take God's place.

It showed that the land represents a false spiritual system which had to be blotted out...

And not one fragment of it left to survive.

When Achan took the Babylonish garment he was violating a law which had to govern the conquest of the land...

And he became the enemy's instrument of breaking into the Divine order, so that Jericho gathered up everything through the whole land.

We are told in the Book of the Acts that the Lord cast out seven nations greater than Israel.

The "seven" of Jericho is symbolic of the seven nations which are to be destroyed, and they are virtually destroyed in Jericho.

Thus you have the flesh as energized by Satan...

And Calvary's inclusive victory over the whole.

That is what Jericho speaks of to begin with.

~T. Austin Sparks