Niels Prip – Blog

In Art Katz’s book, Apostolic Foundations, it says the following concerning the word Apostolic. “It is a word that needs to be resuscitated, rather than to be thought of merely as a denominational identification. Like every great biblical word, we need to be apprehended by the essence of what that word represents”. Apostolic Foundation-page 8. I have been greatly impacted by his writings and have had the fortune of knowing him personally.

As a worship leader, I have always felt that, like the word “apostolic”, the word “worship’ has lost it’s true place and it’s true meaning. What is the true essence of true worship? How is it distinct from praise? Nowadays, worship means one thing to most believers, music and praise. The distinction is lost, much to the hurt of the modern church. True worship is rarely spoken of.

The meaning of the word “worship” has changed in the last 50 or 60 years. If we lose the original meaning of worship, what word will we use to describe what biblical worship is? Genesis 22 is the first place in the Bible where the word “worship” is mentioned. It was when Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac, out of obedience and love toward God. We need to look at Abraham’s love, obedience and sacrifice to get a clear understanding of “worship”. In both the old and new testaments, worship mostly refers to someone “bowing down in reverence, prostrating oneself in humility and reverence”. There are many passages in both testaments, too numerous to mention.

I have friends who are missionaries in China, and they have meetings in their apartment, but they can’t lift their voices to the Lord in singing or playing instruments. If they were heard, they might be arrested and thrown in jail. Someone in America might say, “Oh those poor Christians, they can’t worship the Lord”. It is a ludicrous statement to make since in reality, they are true worshipers of the God. They are living their lives in faith, risking imprisonment! I am sure they would love to be able to praise the Lord with loud singing and instruments, but they can’t. But their faith is real and vibrant, trusting the Lord day to day. Walking by the Spirit in humble dependence on the Lord.

In the American church, we have elevated praise above worship. We have been calling praise and music “worship”, and neglected the weightier requirement of what true worship is. We love the singing and the great praise teams. We love the latest music coming out of the mega churches, many of whose music is produced by corporations. It is now a multi-billion dollar industry. That is cause for concern.

What is the condition of our churches? When He returns, will He find faith in the earth? God seeks those will worship Him in Spirit and in truth. The new testament says very little about music, yet it takes center stage in many churches.

We need to start hearing about true worship again, we need to restore it to it’s primary position in our Christian faith.

For many years now, I have heard, “God is going to bring you to the next level”. I have always known what they meant by that. It usually meant greater power, greater gifting and greater recognition in the kingdom. It was something to be excited about.

Even John Lake in his “Letter to Elder Brooks” in 1916, seemed to sense that God was calling him to a new “level” of ministry. That letter can be read here- https://nielsprip.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/john-g-lakes-letter-to-elder-brooks.pdf . I would encourage you to read it. John Lake already had a very successful ministry but was feeling something new was on the horizon. With all the excitement about the “gifts” and with “revival” in general, it seems we can lose sight of some very important Biblical principals. With man, our ministries are important, with God the man is important. God will sacrifice the ministry to save the man.

Matthew 23:11“But the greatest among you shall be your servant. 12“And whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.

We have it the other way around in our minds. I have often said that the “next level” is down, it is lower and more humble, like Matthew says. When someone tells us that God is going to bring us to the next level, how can we Biblically only think of what God is doing for me? In John we read that John the Baptist said this of Jesus, “He must increase and I must decrease”. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that “we are given gifts not for ourselves, but for the edification of the body”. The goal is for others edification, these gifts are not “self” gifts.

We are told several times in scriptures that “he who wants to be the greatest in the kingdom, should be the servant of all”. Matthew 23:8 “But do not be called Rabbi; for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9“And do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. 10“And do not be called leaders; for One is your Leader, that is, Christ. 11“But the greatest among you shall be your servant. 12“And whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted”.

Who is more humble than Jesus? His humility is shown forth in the fact that “He emptied Himself and took the form of a servant”. Who has more power than Jesus? It was His lowliness, His emptying of Himself that allowed Him great power. What did He think the next level was? Was He thinking in terms of greater power? Greater recognition and success in His Ministry. No, He thought the opposite, He did not grasp for power, “He emptied Himself”.

Philippians 2:5Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, 11and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

This is the mystery! The kingdom works opposite of the world and its systems. Most of the American church has adopted the ways of the world. We need to break free from that and restore these Biblical teachings. We are to prefer one another in love, taking the low road and humbling ourselves in the sight of God. That is where the next level lies!

James 4:6But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.” 7Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

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-