Niels Prip – Blog

David Ravenhill

By T. Austin Sparks 1966

“Out of the spoil won in battles did they dedicate to repair the house of the Lord” 1 Chronicles 26:27.

From this passage of Scripture we gather that the House of the Lord is constituted out of our conflicts. The Lord builds from the fruit of conflict. Thus it was in the temple, given through David to Solomon. When that temple was completed it stood as a monument to universal victory; its very substance declared triumph on the right hand and on the left. The silver and the gold, and all the precious things which it comprised, had been taken in battle and wrought into the House of God. What is an illustration in the Old Testament is true in the reality of the New. The greater Son of David, the greater than Solomon, who “is here”, builds the House from the spoil of His own warfare, and the warfare of His saints.

I was impressed as I read in this first book of Chronicles, chapter 17:9. The Lord is speaking to David, and one of the things which He says is: “And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in their own place, and be moved no more; neither shall the children of wickedness waste them any more, as at the first, and as from the day that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel; and I will subdue all thine enemies”. You notice that the Lord refers to the judges over Israel. The Lord raised up judges, as you will remember, to do that which Israel had failed to do completely under Joshua. Under Joshua they were meant by the Lord to utterly destroy all the nations in the land, and completely to subdue every enemy. They failed to do that. They suffered enemies to remain, they compromised, and then the Lord raised the judges to save them from the terrible results of their having failed to make a complete work of destroying all their enemies. But the judges failed, and the Book of Judges is a sad story of the work still incomplete. The Lord raised up the judges to do that which had not been done, but again the judges did not perfect the work. And it is tremendously interesting and illuminating to notice in 1 Chronicles 18 and 19, when the Lord had spoken to David about building the House, how he definitely and positively took in hand to overthrow all those other nations which the judges had not overthrown; and they are mentioned in these two chapters.

Go over them and you will find a list of the very nations and peoples mentioned in the Book of Judges; and David, through the vision of the House of God, seems to be moved instinctively by the Spirit of God to see that the House can never be realized until these enemies are subdued, until they are entirely overthrown. The Lord fulfilled His word to subdue all his enemies, and those very nations were taken in hand and dealt with. When the Lord had given David victory on every side round about, then he handed the plan to Solomon to carry out the building of the House, and the spoil of those battles was the material for the House. The enemy had the resources for the House of God, and the enemy had to be despoiled that the House might be built. That could lead us a very long way and be very illuminating. I want to seek to reduce it to a few words and a small compass which, nevertheless, will provide you with a great deal for future helpfulness and contemplation.

The Twofold Building

There are two aspects of the building of the House of God. We are rather inclined to take more account of one than the other. There is the numerical side. When we think of building the House of God, we think of the gathering in of people, the adding of souls by their salvation and being brought into the truth, and so we think only of the House of God being built in the sense referred to by Peter: “Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house…”, that is, we think of the numerical side, the gathering of the individual stones and their coming into their place in the spiritual edifice. Well, that is a true side to the building of the Lord’s House, but it is only one side, and only half of the truth.

There is another side which is equally important, without which that will be altogether incomplete; that other side is the spiritual and moral side of the building of God’s House. You may have a great number of individuals saved and still fail to have the truest meaning of the House of God. You may have a congregation and not have a church. You may have numbers, and not have the House of God spiritually. The House of God is not only a numerical thing, it is a spiritual and moral thing. That is, it has a character, and that character is what makes it in very essence the House of God. It takes its character from its Head and will eventually, in its consummation, be recognized – not as a great multitude merely of saved souls – but as something which bears the character of its Head, the Lord Jesus. The time is coming when the Lord will cause His Name to be upon His own; that is, we shall receive a white stone, and in that white stone a new name; we shall have a new name, and we shall be called by His Name, His Name will be in our foreheads.

That is all symbolic language, and its meaning is just this: the Lord Jesus will be so fully manifested in His own that as you look at them you will say: ‘That speaks of the Lord Jesus.’ You will recognize so much of Him, He will be so much in evidence, that you will simply have to say: ‘That is the nature of Christ.’ You have met Him in them, and in meeting them you met Him. And so He will be universally revealed through His own. His Name is His character, what His Name embodies spiritually and morally will be resting upon them, they will take their character from Him, and so there will be one universal displaying of the character and nature of the Lord Jesus. It will not dispense with His own individual personal being, but His people will be a channel of His own universal expression.

Character Through Conflict

The building of the House of the Lord, therefore, is not only a gathering of people but it is a spiritual and a moral building up, and that is only brought about through conflict. The Divine economy has been so ordered that, although the Lord Jesus has in Himself secured a universal triumph over all His foes, the foes are still left for us to deal with. The enemy, although defeated, has still been left for the saints to have something to do with, and the Lord has not put our foes out of the universe, though in Himself He has triumphed. He has left them for us to deal with in His triumph, and it is thus that you and I get our spiritual and moral development. It is by conflict, by battle, by grim and terrible warfare spiritually, that the moral excellencies of our triumphant Head are brought out in us.

We triumph in His victory, but we know that faith is so tested in a conflict, so deeply tried in a battle, that it is something more than just objectively holding on, or believing in something in Christ; that very exercise of faith brings out from Him, into our own souls, the strength of His victory. We are made morally one with Him in His triumph by a test of faith which is so grim and so terrible that nothing that is not of Him in us would be sufficient to carry us through. It has to be wrought into our very being, and that is done through conflict in which faith is drawn out; and so, spiritually and morally, we build through conflict, through adversity, in the Divine and sovereign ordering of our lives.

The moral side of things is that which comes out in exercise, exercise of faith in the value of Calvary’s victory. It is one thing to have a theoretical appropriation of Calvary’s victory and say in an hour of emergency: ‘I take the victory of Calvary.’ But very often nothing happens, and although you take a position like that, you find yourself called upon to hold on, and hold on, and hold on, and during that time of being called upon by the Lord to hold on, faith is being tested, Calvary’s victory is becoming something not objectively taken hold of but inwardly established, and at last that victory is in us as it is in the Lord. But it has become a moral quality in our being, and in the next time of testing it is not a trying to get hold of something, it is there with its roots in us, something has been done in us, it has been made a part of us.

Excerpt from T A Sparks “The Spoil of Battle- full booklet at https://www.austin-sparks.net/english/000487.html

“For fifty years (until 1957) the people of the “Pentecostal Movement” have been in the great spiritual contest of “I” vs. “Christ.”  All the powers of an earth-overflowing-hell have been pitted against those who have been “baptized” with the Holy Ghost.  What for?  To keep such in the view, the sight, the SEE-ing of themselves – their greatness, their power, their glory, what they “shall be.”  That self-sight and self-glory is the spirit-of-the-world in which is the flame of sin and of death.”

(Meditations in the Revelation, Chapter 14)

So wrote Rex Andrews, one of the early recipients of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 1907. Now (2023), we can look back and assess the outcome of that “great spiritual contest” which has continued to rage for the past 115 years.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the 20th century began in Wales in 1907, overflowed at Azusa St in Los Angeles in 1907, and streamed across America and eventually to the ends of the earth within 10 years. Many well-known denominations were formed in its wake, and many faith healers, evangelists, and preachers rose to reach international recognition.

With the help of television in the 1950s, and the additional influence of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, the Pentecostal movement attained heights of popularity unimagined by its founders. How Christ-like are the leaders of it now, in 2023?

To be continued-

Evergreen Center-March 2023 Newsletter

Psalm 119:132 “Turn to me and be gracious to me, ‘after Thy manner’ with those who love Thy name.” NASB

It is God’s nature that He is gracious toward those who turn to Him, toward those who love His Name. Another translation says, “as is Your way”. It is what God does; it is His nature. I think of Hosea 6:3 “So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth”. He is the same yesterday, today and forever! His nature, His manner and His ways are as certain as the coming dawn. It is unchangeable! It is something we can count on day after day, what a wonderful blessing!

Psalm 8:17 “I love those who love me; and those who diligently seek me will find me”. It is His “manner” to respond to us and love us when we love Him and diligently seek Him. This is the way of God. He is a rewarder of those who seek Him, He can not do otherwise, it is in His nature.

John 14:21 “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me. The one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him”. These are promises that God has made to those who seek him and love His name, and when we do that, there is a reward! He will reveal Himself to us!

I am struck by that phrase, “after Thy manner”! There is a manner with the Lord that might be better understood if we think of our own manner with our children. We have a selfless love for our children, and we bask in their love and dependency on us. Jesus said we should come to Him as little children. There is a reward for us who come in such a way.

Understanding the ways of God can take a lifetime, they are vast, and we will never fully know Him until we see Him in heaven. Let us humble ourselves, love the Lord with our whole hearts and seek Him. We will get greater glimpses of His Glory and of His ways.

From the 1970’s, music by Terry Martin-

Spiritual Authority: The Word and the Testimony by A.W. Tozer, 1950 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies … 2 Pet. 2:1 Whatever it may be in our Christian experience that originates outside of Scriptures should, for that very reason, be suspect until it can be shown to be in accord with them. If it should be found to be contrary to the Word of revealed truth no true Christian will accept it as being from God. However high the emotional content, no experience can be proved to be genuine unless we can find chapter and verse authority for it in Scriptures. “To the word and to the testimony” must always be the last and final proof. Whatever is new or singular should also be viewed with caution until it can furnish scriptural proof of its validity. Throughout the twentieth century quite a number of unscriptural notions have gained acceptance among Christians by claiming that they were among truths that were to be revealed in the last days. The truth is that the Bible does not teach that there will be new light and advanced spiritual experiences in the latter days; it teaches the exact opposite! Nothing in Daniel or the New Testament epistles can be tortured into advocating the idea that we of the end of the Christian era shall enjoy light that was not known at its beginning. Beware of any man who claims to be wiser than the apostles or holier than the martyrs of the Early Church. The best way to deal with him is to rise and leave his presence! Copyright 1950 A. W. Tozer From “Renewed Day By Day – A Daily Devotional” Compiled by G.B. Smith, Copyright 1980

Our Lord forewarned us that false Christs should come. Mostly we think of these as coming from the outside, but we should remember that they may also arise within the sanctuary itself.We must be extremely careful that the Christ we profess to follow is indeed the very Christ of God. There is always danger that we may be following a Christ who is not the true Christ but one conjured up by our imagination and made in our own image.I confess to a feeling of uneasiness about this when I observe the questionable things Christ is said to do for people these days. He is often recommended as a wonderfully obliging but not too discriminating Big Brother who delights to help us to accomplish our ends, and who further favors us by forbearing to ask any embarrassing questions about the moral and spiritual qualities of those ends.In our eagerness to lead men to “accept Christ” we are often tempted to present for acceptance a Christ who is little more than a caricature of “that holy thing” which was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, to be crucified and rise the third day to take His place on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens.Within the past few years, for instance, Christ has been popularized by some so-called evangelicals as one who, if a proper amount of prayer were made, would help the pious prizefighter to knock another fighter unconscious in the ring. Christ is also said to help the big-league pitcher to get the proper hook on his curve. In another instance He assists an athletically minded person to win the high jump, and still another not only to come in first in a track meet, but also to set a new record in the bargain. He is said also to have helped a praying businessman to beat out a competitor in a deal, to underbid a rival and to secure a coveted contract to the discomfiture of someone else who was trying to get it. He is even thought to lend succor to a praying movie actress while she plays a role so lewd as to bring blood to the face of a professional prostitute.Thus our Lord becomes the Christ of utility, a kind of Aladdin’s lamp to do minor miracles on behalf of anyone who summons Him to do his bidding.Apparently no one stops to consider that if Christ were to step into a prize ring and use His divine power to help one prizefighter to paralyze another, He would be putting one fighter at a cruel disadvantage and violating every common instinct of fair play. If He were to aid one businessman to the detriment of another He would be practicing favoritism and revealing a character wholly unlike the Bible picture of the real Christ. Furthermore, we would have the grotesque situation of the Lord of glory coming to the aid of an unreconstructed Adam—on Adam’s terms.All this is too horrible to contemplate, and I hope that the proponents of this modern accommodating Christ do not see the implications that lie in their shoddy doctrine. But perhaps they do see, and are willing nevertheless to offer this utilitarian Christ as the Savior of mankind. If so, then they no longer believe in the deity of the lordship of Christ in any proper definition of those words. Theirs is a Christ of carnal convenience, not too far removed from the gods of paganism.The whole purpose of God in redemption is to make us holy and to restore us to the image of God. To accomplish this He disengages us from earthly ambitions and draws us away from the cheap and unworthy prizes that worldly men set their hearts upon. A holy man would not dream of asking God to help him beat an opponent or win over a competitor. He would not wish to succeed if to do so another man must fail. No man in whom the Spirit dwells could bring himself to ask the Lord to help him knock another man unconscious for filthy lucre or the plaudits of the vulgar spectators.A Joshua fighting the battles of the Lord, a David rescuing God’s Israel from the Philistines, a Washington seeking God’s help against the enemy that would enslave the young America—this is up on a high level of moral and spiritual principle and in line with the purpose of God in human history. But to teach that Christ will use His sacred power to further our worldly interests is to wrong our Lord and injure our own souls.We modern evangelicals need to learn the truths of the sovereignty of God and the lordship of Christ. God will not play along with Adam; Christ will not be used by any of Adam’s selfish brood. We had better learn these things fast if this generation of young Christians is to be spared the supreme tragedy of following a Christ who is merely a Christ of convenience and not the true Lord of glory after all.

—The Root of the Righteous by A W Tozer

I suppose I am a late comer in the discussion about the prophetic words that were given prior to the last presidential election. Many of the charismatic prophetic voices were predicting a victory for their side, and then they turned out to be wrong. Most of those voices never admitted that they were totally wrong, coming up with all sorts of excuses. Some persisted in saying their candidate is still going to get into office. A very sad commentary on the charismatic movement. And what is worse is, the gospel is again maligned, it says in 2 Peter 2:2 “…because of them the way of truth will be spoken evil of”. There is much to be said about this, but not at this time.

Why this struck me after 2 years is this, I was recently meditating on the book of Micah and came across this verse. Micah 3:7 “Then shall the seers shall be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God”. They were ashamed because what they had spoken in God’s name had not come to pass. In verse 5, God is referring to the prophets, the seers.

Barnes notes on the Bible on Micah 3:7 “They shall cover their lips – Literally, the hair of the upper lip. This was an action enjoined on lepers Leviticus 13:45, and a token of mourning Ezekiel 24:17, Ezekiel 24:22; a token then of sorrow and uncleanness. With their lips they had lied, and now they should cover their lips, as men dumb and ashamed. “For there is no answer of God,” as these deceivers had pretended to have. When all things shall come contrary to what they had promised, it shall be clear that God did not send them. And having plainly no answer of God, they shall not dare to feign one then”. The Targum puts it this way, “for there is not in them a spirit of prophecy from the Lord.”

What stuck me was this, today’s prophets have no shame! There is no owning up to the fact that they did not hear from God! At least the false prophets in Micah’s time covered their lips and were ashamed. They knew they were shamed, most of today’s so-called prophets know no shame. It is staggering to think about. And millions continue to follow them like it’s no big deal, like truth doesn’t matter. On to the next YouTube video or podcast, after all, it’s their ministry that must go on.

That is a sad commentary on Christianity. We are to love truth, and walk in the Spirit and Truth. That is who God seeks after. Lord help us!

Zechariah 13:4 “And on that day every prophet who prophesies will be ashamed of his vision, and he will not put on a hairy cloak in order to deceive”.

Is there no shame?

https://www.youtube.com/@niels50

I am an immigrant from Denmark. My family applied to come to America around 1955 and we were on a waiting list for about 2 years before we were allowed to immigrate.  I was 7 years old when we finally made the trip and were issued our permanent resident visas. My parents became citizens when I was 15. They could have included me in the citizenship process, but they decided that when I was old enough, I should make that decision for myself. So, I just put it off. During that time, I traveled back to Denmark and Sweden in a Christian band and ministered for 5 weeks. I had to get a Danish Passport to leave the country and to get back into the United States, since I was still not a citizen, that was in 1977.

Finally, after 2 attempts to become a citizen, (that is a long story in itself), I became a United States citizen in 1984.  As I did all the paperwork and got thru the interview process to become a Naturalized Citizen, I had to renounce my Danish citizenship. The United States would not allow me to have dual citizenship.

So that brings me to Philippians 3:20-21 “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself”. When we come to Christ, we forsake the world, we realize that this is not our permanent home. We renounce our earthly citizenship and become part of God’s Kingdom. Heb 13:14 “For here we do not have an abiding city, but we are seeking for the coming one.” What a great hope that we have! We would do well to focus on this! There is a Kingdom that will come, and Jesus will rule over ALL the kingdoms of this world.

Being a musician and a psalmist, Psalm 119:54 has for many years been a verse that I have lived my life by. Psalm 119:54 “Your statutes have been my songs in the House of my pilgrimage”. And Psalm 119:19 “I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide your commandments from me.”

We are to live as strangers in the earth, seeing ahead to the Kingdom that awaits us. We are to denounce our citizenship in this world, and be busy with the Father’s work, living a quiet life, being led by His Spirit. All the turmoil in the earth will end, there is a day appointed.

Eph 2:19 “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household”.

Praise be to God, the King of the universe!!!