A Kingdom, A People & A River

A New Paradigm For the Post Modern House Church Movement

Parousia Weekly Update Letter For The Week of  October 20, 2005

 

"When a prophet is accepted and deified, his message is lost. The prophet is only useful so long as he is stoned as a public nuisance calling us to repentance, disturbing our comfortable routines, breaking our respectable idols, shattering our sacred conventions" (A. G. Gardiner as quoted by Arthur Wallis, "In The Day of Thy Power").

 

In This Issue:

 

Post Cards From The Edge of a Post Christi an Post Modern Culture

House Church Notes – “Gasoline In The Aisles”

Praise Report Regarding “The Move”

 

Dear Friends,

 

Yep, I know. I sent out a letter earlier this week. But what I am about to share came to my attention yesterday (Wednesday) and I felt impressed that I should pass it on. There’s gasoline in the aisles . . . . and that’s a good thing!

 

Blessings,

Maurice

 

Post Cards From The Edge of a Post Christi an Post Modern Culture

 

"I believe in Christi anity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else."-C.S. Lewis

 

More Post-Cards Next Week

 

The School of 5-Fold Ministry - Update

 

The River of God ’s Spirit is preparing to flow in great power & blessing. Are you prepared to “run with the horses” and to lead in this coming move of God? You are cordially invited to come and join us this Friday evening at 6:00 pm, 1114 N. Rudolf in the Spokane Valley (roughly 3 blocks east of the intersection of Boone & Argonne. When you reach the stop sign at Locust & Boone you are 1 block away. Bring your favorite potluck dish, an open heart, a hunger for God and maybe even a friend. Details posted on our website at www.parousianetwork.com/school_of_5_fold_ministry.htm.

 

Late House Church Notes - “Gasoline In The Aisles”

 

It was brought vividly home to me yesterday that there is gasoline “flowing in the aisles” of the church, and yes, there lies a story.

 

Allow me to digress a little. Well, only 100 years!  In the winter of 1907 the Presbyterian missionaries in Korea decided to use the harshest week of the winter for Bible school. It was so successful that they filled the Central Presbyterian Church in Pyongyang with men, and the Southgate Presbyterian Church with women. This happened in the wake of the Welsh Revival, when the Holy Spirit had swept through the United States and missionaries everywhere were pray ing for revival on the foreign field. But Korea was regarded as a heathen country. No one was expecting a great outpouring of the Spirit as in Wales . Graham Lee, an American, was leading a meeting of over 1,500 men. Before getting down to the business of Bible study he called for a brief season of pray er, and asked one man to open and another to close when two or three others had had the opportunity to pray . But by the time the first man had finished pray ing there were six more men standing and waiting to pray . When the second man finished pray ing there were a dozen more men standing to pray , and by the time the third man had pray ed, more than twenty men were standing to pray . After several more men had pray ed, Graham Lee interrupted and said, “Well, apparently you want to pray . Alright then, instead of Bible study we’ll have pray er. You may pray .” Immediately, all 1,500 men rose to their feet and began to pray ( a new phenomenon which had not occurred before in Korea , although it had begun happening during the Welsh Revival). An eyewitness to the meeting said “The effect was beyond description - not confusion, but a vast harmony of sound and spirit, like the noise of the surf in an ocean of pray er.” But with the continued pray er came an intense conviction of sin.

 

An Englishman, Lord William Cecil, was also present. He was so excited and moved by what he witnessed that he did what an Englishman does when he gets excited; he wrote a letter to The Times of London , describing the scene:

 

“. . . an elder arose and confessed a grudge against a missionary colleague and asked for forgiveness. The missionary stood to pray but reached only the address to Deity: ‘Aboji!’ ‘Father!’ when, with a rush, a power from without seemed to take hold of the meeting. The Europeans described its manifestations as terrifying. Nearly everyone present was seized with the most poignant sense of mental anguish; before each one, his sins seemed to be rising in condemnation of his life. Some were springing to their feet, and pleading for an opportunity to relieve their consciences by making their abasement known; and others were silent, but rent with agony, clenching their fists and striking their heads against the ground in the struggle to resist the Power that was forcing them painfully and agonizingly to confess their misdeeds.”

 

The meeting was beyond human control of the missionaries who, horror-struck at some of the sins confessed, could only watch the fire burn. It continued all evening, from eight in the evening until after midnight . Finally, at 2 o’clock in the morning, a lull, perhaps caused by sheer exhaustion, gave the missionaries an opportunity to pronounce a benediction and send everyone home. Next day the missionaries held an emergency meeting, and hopefully concluded that “after the storm comes the calm.”  But the same thing happened that night, and continued nightly all week long, until the Holy Fire had burned its way through the Church and the body of Christ had been cleansed. In the meetings that followed, conviction of sin and reconciliation of enemies continued. Not only was there deep confession, but also much restitution. The heathen Koreans were astounded and a powerful impulse of evangelism resulted. That terrible but wonderful meeting was the birth of the Korean Church . In that year of 1907, nine-tenths of all students in Union Christi an College in Pyongyang confessed conversion to Christi anity in February of 1907. (From When The Fire Fell, by R. Maurice Smith )

 

What those Presbyterian missionaries of 100 years ago didn’t know was that there was “gasoline in the aisles.” All that was needed was a divine (note: I said divine, not human) spark from off God’s altar to ignite the conflagration which became a revival of such power that it has become the stuff of history books & legend among missionaries to this day.

 

I believe there is “gasoline in the aisles” of the church today. And that is the reason for this newsletter. As many of you know I wrote in January of 2003 about what I sensed was a coming revival (you can read this in our newsletter archives on our website. Check out the e-letters for 01/07/03 , 10/16/03 and 01/13/04 ). Shortly thereafter God gave birth to the Spokane Market Place Prayer Initiative to call the city to pray in and for a movement of God in the Market Place. Then, in October of that year I began to sense that God’s call upon “the Church” in our city was to enter into a season of pray er, fasting & repentance. It was for this reason that we declared and sponsored “40 Days of Purposeful Repentance” during the Lent 2004 season. We sent out over 200 information packets to area churches, sent out weekly e-mail devotionals on repentance, sponsored worship evenings and sought to challenge and encourage Churches to pursue and embrace a season of repentance. The response from the Church was . . . “underwhelming” including church and ministry leaders who informed me that they saw no need for repentance, either personally or corporately (no, I’m not making that up). The River of God flowed on, God sent me down into the West Central neighborhood to labor with Larry Whiston & Jan Foland in the Off Broadway Family Outreach, all the time wondering in my spirit, “Lord, what was that all about?”

 

Now, nearly two years later, I’m beginning to understand what God is doing. At a recent pray er and intercession conference at the Korean Presbyterian Church in Spokane my ministry partner in West Central, Jan Foland, was commissioned to create a banner for the conference. Without any input from myself or anyone else Jan created a banner which was nothing less than a pictorial representation of God’s prophetic declarations over Spokane for the past 3 years. When I arose on Sunday morning of the conference I heard the Lord telling me that I was to explain the banner that evening. Furthermore, He said, I was to close my explanation by declaring “REPENT” to the four corners of the Church (I dislike “stunts” and so found myself arguing with God for about half an hour over whether this was really necessary). Once again, when the evening was over, and the deed done, I found myself asking in my spirit, “Lord, what was that all about?” The answer came the next day when I sensed God saying that this 2-year season (which began in October of 2003 – see my weekly e-lettter for October 2003) of calling the corporate church in Spokane to repent was now being closed. The River of God would now flow differently, and that repentance and revival would also come differently.

 

OK, OK, what about the gasoline? Be patient. I’m getting there. This week, at the monthly meeting of the “Linking Arms” ministry leaders network someone shared that at the October 15 “All City Prayer” meeting the gathering took an “unusual” turn, namely, toward waiting on God and repenting before His Presence. Not formalized “top-down” repentance by “leadership” but heartfelt repentance on the part of intercessors who found themselves. Suddenly, my “spiritual antennae” were up. Later, over lunch with a local volunteer Chaplain at a state prison facility, he related how at his weekly meeting he found the conversation turning to the issue of personal holiness and repentance. “You could have heard a pin drop,” he told me. Funny, how the holiness and Presence of God will do that to a group of people.

 

There is a great deal of emphasis on the importance and role of “worship” in the church today. And let’s be clear, worship is important. But as Wolfgang Simson recently observed, much of our “worship” is “cheap worship” because it costs us nothing. I believe that God is about to introduce His church to the role and importance of “costly worship,” that is, worship that costs us something. God-breathed repentance represents “costly worship.” It is going to cost us our pride, our self-indulgence, our visions of greatness. We are about to discover that God really doesn’t care how much Greek we can translate, how prophetic we think we are, whether or not we observe the seven O.T. feasts or how long we have been fasting and pray ing for revival. God is about to introduce us to “costly worship.”  He is preparing to glorify Himself at our expense.

 

There’s gasoline starting to trickle down the “aisles” of the church. No, not the buildings, but the people. What is that gasoline? It is a divinely granted “spirit of repentance,” the broken hearted cry of a people who are hungry for God on His terms. What are His terms? “A broken spirit and a contrite heart.”  I believe it is that same “gasoline” which, unbeknownst to the missionaries and leaders of that day, flowed down the aisles of those Korean Churches 100 years ago, waiting only for the spark of a burning coal off God’s altar. Much of today’s Church leadership is as oblivious to the gasoline currently trickling down the aisles of the church as those Presbyterian missionaries were 100 years ago. And the coming spiritual conflagration of repentance will be as surprising (and uncontrollable) to today’s leadership as it was then.

 

As I meditated on what I felt God had shown me I had a “vision” if you will. I saw myself sitting in a pew, on the end, next to an aisle. I looked down and could see gasoline flowing down the aisle (not from the pulpit, but from the back of the room). At the same time I saw, in slow motion, a  hand come down and release a glowing coal which moved slowly through the air toward the gasoline in the aisle. And I heard myself saying, “Oh . . . my . . . (you fill in the bank).”

 

There’s gasoline in the aisles folks . . . and burning coals in the air.

 

“The altar is prepared, the sacrifice is laid, now let the fire fall.”  - Evan Roberts on the Eve of the Welsh Revival of 1904.

 

Praise Report Regarding “The Move”

 

Our thanks to all of you who have pray ed with us and for us regarding our need to move by November 1. Through a series of miraculous circumstances and contacts, we have been offered a home in the Spokane Valley rent free for a year! God has answered your pray ers for us and we are thankful and excited about this new step. Please keep us in your pray ers over the next couple of weeks as we make this transition. If you are in a mood to help us move, let me know. We’re lining up a moving crew!