Jonathan Brenneman's Blog, page 3

Submission In The Fear of the Lord

One of these days I was praying and asking the Lord for answers and guidance. Apparently, God’s not worried about the same things I sometimes am! Instead of responding to the issues that I felt were so pressing, the Lord said “Go to the park and do a video teaching. You haven’t made a YouTube video for a while.” So I did! I felt that I needed to share about submission in the fear of the Lord.

Godly submission in the fear of the Lord, not the fear of man.

Ephesians 5:21 (NKJV) Submitting to one another in the fear of God.
1 Peter 5:5  (NKJV) Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”

Many today are teaching submission in the fear of men instead of submission in the fear of the Lord. Let’s make the difference clear to help the church stop continuing in the same destructive cycles. Scripture says all of us are to submit to each other in the fear of the Lord, and then that those who are younger should submit to their elders. Many people wrongly assume that submission implies a hierarchy of authority between the individual believer and God, but that is an error. The command for all of us to submit to each other shows that submission doesn’t always imply hierarchy. There was no place for a spiritual hierarchy between the individual leader and God in Jesus’ teaching. He forbade it.

Matthew 23:8-12 (NIV) “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Authority in the church isn’t derived from position in a hierarchy but is derived from service and humility in submission to Christ. It only goes so far as that elder is submitted to Christ! It is Christ’s authority, not the authority of one person in the church over another.

The Bible says to submit to elders, but that’s not based on hierarchy. Rather, the elders are supposed to be those with more experience who we recognize as walking closely with the Lord and submitting to the Lord. Submission to them is not unquestioning obedience, but it is recognizing their example of following Jesus. If they’re living in rebellion against the Lord, they shouldn’t be our leaders! Many leaders are living in rebellion against the Lord. If that is the case, we need to have the fear of the Lord and not the fear of man.

Authority from God or from men?

Some are placed in a position by men, yet they lack spiritual authority because they are not submitted to Jesus. There are often also those who function as elders in the church, yet the institution does not recognize their eldership because “pastoring” has become more about a position in a hierarchy than about what the person is actually doing! Think about it! How many people call someone “My pastor” who they rarely even talk to!

Many people think that hierarchical submission is what’s going to protect the church from error. They say you have to have someone above you who you’re submitted to. But the history of the church shows that submission in the fear of man is what actually leads whole groups into error and heresy. When the leader is in error, nobody wants to question anything. There have been many situations when the pastor was in adultery and people hid what was happening. I’ve seen pastors teaching blatant heresy and nobody dares to say “This isn’t what I read in the Bible!” Most of the church keeps following them. Why? They care more about what the pastor and other people think than what the Lord thinks. They are submitting in the fear of men, not the fear of the Lord.

Proverbs 29:25 (NKJV) The fear of man brings a snare.

So many Christians forget that the Bible says we must obey God rather than men. We can’t go astray just because leaders are going astray! We have to have the fear of the Lord! When you submit to leaders, it should be because they’re submitting to Jesus Christ. When you listen to what elders are saying, it should be because they’re saying what Jesus is saying and what the Bible is saying!

Submission in the fear of man leads the whole church into error.

A young man told me about a guy walking in supernatural power who became demonized and fell into error. I’m pretty sure he was referring to Jason Westerfield, who began teaching heresy and didn’t submit when Bill Johnson corrected him. The young guy used what happened with Jason as an argument that we must submit to someone in a hierarchy above us as our “head” to protect us from error. This young man doesn’t understand that there is only one body of Christ, and only one head, and the head is Christ. Scripture is clear about this, yet much of the religious church today talks as if there were many bodies and many heads. The body of Christ is not a many-headed monster. Every individual believer is directly under the authority of Christ.

Submission in a hierarchy in the fear of man doesn’t protect people from error. On the contrary, we can give many examples of a leader going into error and the whole church went into error by “submitting” to their leader. This is typical when submission in the fear of man is taught. The whole church imitates the error of the leader! But the fear of the Lord keeps us out of Satan’s snares.

If the church were teaching submission in the fear of the Lord, many other people would have corrected Jason Westerfield before Bill Johnson even talked to him. Maybe some did. I don’t know, but I know that the tendency is that people ignore error because they think they are “below” the man in error so they have to put up with his error, and only someone “above” him like Bill Johnson can correct him, or “Let God deal with it.” So we have a system based on the fear of man, which is a snare.

The fear of the Lord is wisdom (Job 28:28) and a fountain of life by which we avoid the snares of death. (Proverbs 14:27) Don’t be a man-pleaser, but seek to please Him who is the Judge of the living and the dead. For some, that has meant having to walk alone and being outside the religious camp!

Submission in the fear of man was the reason Mike Bickle acted as a sexual predator for decades and people hid his sin. It is the reason a pastor can make a blatantly heretical statement and most of the church keeps following him. Submission in the fear of man makes it taboo to ask questions. This doesn’t protect the church from error. It leads the church into error.

When leaders are not submitted to God, do you obey them or obey God?

There are whole Christian movements and people groups coming to know Christ now because a Christian disobeyed their pastor to preach the gospel. YWAM wouldn’t exist if Loren Cunningham hadn’t obeyed God’s voice even when his leaders weren’t with him. People have received miracles when I disobeyed a religious leader who thought I needed his permission to obey Jesus!

Jesus disobeyed the religious leaders of his time. The apostles disobeyed the religious leaders of their time. It was about a position for those leaders, but their authority was devised from a place in a hierarchy and not from their own submission to the Lord. They were rebellious. The religious leaders of that day said “Stop preaching in the name of Jesus!” and they responded “How can we stop talking about what we have seen and heard!”

Jesus is our example of submission. He became like us in every way. He submitted to his parents, submitted to God the Father, and submitted to baptism by John the Baptist. But Jesus didn’t submit in the fear of man. He submitted in the fear of the Lord. Jesus frequently disobeyed the religious leaders of his day, because what they were saying was against what the Father was saying.

When the church does not repent of submission in the fear of man, it ends up in apostasy. And there’s a danger of many churches today ending in apostasy because they’re following men and not God. They are following those men even when they rebel against God and rebel against God’s Word. They are turning away from the truth because they’ve been taught submission in the fear of man.

Titus 1:5 The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you.

Yes, we do recognize and “appoint elders.” But if we read the whole passage, Paul shares qualifications for those elders as ones who hold fast to Christ’s message and are examples for the church. Yet some churches don’t appoint elders who have those qualifications. They appoint people who want to be first, who gain influence by flattery and manipulation.

You don’t need to be recognized in some position to have spiritual authority. What you need is to submit to the Lord and say what the Lord is saying! Ananias was a man who the Bible simply describes as a “disciple,” not a leader or elder, but the Lord sent him to ordain Saul. Ananias didn’t need a position in a hierarchy to walk in divine authority by obeying God. And Paul later said he was sent not from man or by man, but by God.

We often have situations like that of Saul and David. The Lord was no longer with Saul, but a large part of the nation followed him as king because of his position. Saul was recognized by men but was not walking in God’s authority. God appointed David as king, but for a long time he was not recognized by men. Yet there were a few who recognized the spiritual authority that comes from submission to God and joined with David. It started with a few, but in time that number grew.

What is important to you? Is it a position in a manmade hierarchy, or it is how that person is actually functioning in the church? Is it a person’s title, or an example that you want to imitate? Is it man’s approval, or God’s? Who do you recognize as elders in the faith? Do you call someone “my pastor” just because you’ve heard it’s important to be “under authority,” even if you barely even talk to that person and they aren’t really functioning as a pastor in your life? Or do you recognize elders because you know they have a faith that you want to imitate? Did you ever obey someone in the church just because of a position even when they were not submitted to God? Or do you submit to elders because you recognize their submission to Jesus and the Spirit of Christ speaking through them? Have you ever had to disobey man in order to obey God? Have you ever wanted to ask an obvious question when someone used a scripture verse totally out of context, but failed to do so because it would be seen as “rebellious?” It’s so sad that quoting the second part of a Bible verse would so often been seen as “rebellious!” Break free from the fear of man and walk in the fear of the Lord!

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Senses Trained To Discern Good And Evil

In the last post, we talked about discerning true and false accusations. In many situations, the church should have easily discerned that a leader was walking in the flesh even before the scandal. I thought I was just going to write about that, but the Lord reminded me that we will also encounter slanderous and false accusations and we must learn to discern them as well.

There was a formatting problem and the paragraphs were stuck together in my last email, so I apologize if it was difficult to read! I had both positive and negative feedback when I shared how the accusations against T.B. Joshua keep getting proven false. However, this has continued, and the agenda behind the documentary has become clear. After my last post, I learned that Open Democracy, the L.G.B.T.Q. agenda-promoting, George Soros-funded organization that produced the T.B. Joshua documentary in conjunction with BBC, is the same organization that previously got the YouTube channel of T.B. Joshua’s church removed from YouTube. They kept sending complaints of “hate speech” because Emmanuel TV was showing homosexuals receiving deliverance and testifying that they were free!

I found an African brother, Evangelist Nelson, who spent 12 years with Joshua and is doing a great job replying to accusations on his Light of Hope TV channel. I see the light of the Lord in his eyes as he speaks. One of the accusations was that T.B. Joshua said he hated white people and wanted to enslave them because they enslaved his ancestors. I see darkness in the eyes of the person making this accusation in the documentary, and a little investigation shows the accusation to be absurd! As Evangelist Nelson points out, it’s easy to verify that the majority of the people T.B. Joshua ordained as prophets were foreigners, not Nigerians! Why would so many of the people T.B. Joshua ordained as prophets be white foreigners if he “hated white people and wanted to enslave them?” Why does the testimony of so many white people who knew T.B. Joshua disagree with this accusation?

And why do so many Christians continue to give weight to accusations that are convincingly refuted one after another? I ask “Is there no fear of the Lord that the church doesn’t hesitate so as not to participate in slander when these accusations keep getting exposed as false?” On the other hand, I see situations of obvious abuse and carnality and ask “Is there no fear of the Lord that the church doesn’t confront this?”

I’d like to continue today by sharing my thoughts on spiritual sight and having our senses trained to discern good and evil.

Two Surgeries Canceled in One Day!

The Lord has been doing so many miracles. One of these Saturdays, I went to the pool with my daughters. A family arrived, and as I felt the Lord’s love for the people, I saw a vision of a dark spot in the grandmother’s knee. They got in the pool with us and I asked the lady “Hey, does your knee hurt?”

She said “Yes. Why?”

I replied “I had a vision of a cyst in your knee, but now I’m going to pray for you and Jesus will remove it.”

She started crying and said “It has been hurting for over a year and they say I need surgery.” We prayed, and when she got out of the pool, all the pain was gone!

Then that night we were at Casa da Paz, the recovery house I’m most involved in. We were praying for each man during worship, and I got to one guy who was new and yelled “You have a stone in your body!” I yelled because the music was loud. It came to me that he had a stone when I got near him, but I didn’t know where it was. He said “Yes, I have a stone in my gallbladder and they say it’s so serious that it could kill me, and I need to have a surgery.”

I asked “Who told me about the stone?” He didn’t know. I said “You didn’t tell me. You just confirmed it, but Jesus told me because he’s removing it right now!” We prayed, the pain left, and he testified. We also saw the Lord do other miracles.

When I say “two surgeries were canceled in one day,” I don’t mean that these people had dates for surgeries marked on the calender and the doctor took them off of the calender on that day. I just mean that two people needed surgeries, and now they won’t need them anymore! They were canceled in heaven!

I have been having so many experiences like this of seeing into people’s bodies and they are healed. It’s exciting! Spiritual sight enables us to see what God is doing and agree with Him, and that releases His power! It’s important that we agree with God!

What does this have to do with my previous post and both real scandals and false accusations? Just as I saw darkness in that lady’s knee and she confirmed it when I asked, I’ve seen darkness in the bellies of guys who were in sexual sin. They confirmed it when I asked, and received deliverance as others have received healing. In the same way, I saw darkness in the life of the local pastor and I told my wife he was living in rebellion against Jesus weeks before the scandal. In the same way, I see darkness in the eyes of Agromah Paul when he makes the accusations that T.B. Joshua “hated white people,” but I see light in the eyes of Evangelist Nelson as he responds to the accusation.

How Is Spiritual Sight Developed?

Hebrews 5:14 (NIV) But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

It’s hard to explain how I so often see the condition in the body of a stranger, but this has been developed. Spending a lot of time praying for people and feeling God’s love for them has a lot to do with it. As I pray for people and often “see” the darkness or problem in their body, I also often “see” when the condition has changed and I’ll keep praying until I “see” that it’s better. Don’t ask me to explain, but it’s like light or darkness! We understand from Hebrews 5:14 that our senses can be trained to distinguish good from evil, or light from darkness.

Discernment comes by knowing God, who is light, and discernment grows by walking in communion with Him! Worship, praise and thanksgiving, praying in tongues, and filling our hearts with God’s word, form a familiarity with light. We become familiar with what God is like and who He is. Knowing who He is enables us to recognize when a spirit is not from Him. It also enables us to recognize when a person is walking in God’s Spirit.

The person with God’s spirit makes judgements about all things, discerning between good and evil, light and darkness.

1 Corinthians 2:12-15 (NIV) What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
    so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

What Can Hinder Discernment?

 John 9:39-41 (NIV) Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

Matthew 15:10-14 (NIV) Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”

He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

The Pharisees were blind because of their pride, and it would have been better to admit they were blind so Jesus could open their eyes than to claim that they could see! They cared about the outward things, but not about the heart. Unfortunately, many Christians today are still following blind guides. They follow pastors who claim that they can see, call themselves “spiritual fathers,” and want the church to serve them, but they are living in bondage to sin. In the local church here, I can barely believe how many people still want to follow the pastor who has repeatedly betrayed every wife he’s had and been involved in one affair after another. But they still call him their pastor and want him back! And he is still calling himself their “father” instead of humbling himself and admitting his blindness!

Just as our discernment grows by communion with the Holy Spirit, walking in communion with darkness will blind us.

2nd Peter 2:7-8 (NIV) …he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)

A person who is walking in communion with God is bothered by wickedness. A person walking in communion with God isn’t entertained by violence and sexual immorality. They don’t enjoy it. Yet many church people have normalized wickedness. In the local church here, the responses of many people to the pastor’s immoral conduct is “don’t judge,” or “we’re all sinners, we’re human, and we all make mistakes.”

They don’t understand the gospel or God’s grace. Of course we believe in God’s radical grace to transform the worst of people. But that’s just it. God’s grace saves us from sin, takes us out of darkness, and puts us in the new Man, Jesus, who is righteous. God’s grace teaches us to deny ungodliness. We have all sinned, yes, but our identity is no longer “sinners expected to sin” if we’re in Christ. By taking the words “don’t judge” out of their Biblical context, they fail to discern between light and darkness and continue to be blind people following blind guides. To the contrary, the Bible says that those with the Spirit of God judge all things. We discern between light and darkness, good and evil.

1 John 3:7-10 (NIV) Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

Communion with the Holy Spirit enables spiritual sight. Communion with any other spirit blinds us. Spiritual blindness not only makes people unable to discern darkness, but it causes people to be unable to recognize the Spirit of God when they see it. Bitterness, unforgiveness, and self-righteousness can cause people to fall into the trap of participating in slander and false accusations. Thinking influenced by Greek Philosophy, Stoicism, and Gnosticism often causes people to see God’s work and think it is the devil! The Pharisees thought they saw, but they were so blind that when God himself came to them in the flesh, they said Jesus was from the devil!

Discerning the Spirit People Are Walking In

Of course, we develop and grow in discernment, so we test our discernment. I tested my discernment of seeing a dark spot in a lady’s knee by asking her about her knee. She confirmed it. When I had a vision of God ripping the spirit of lust out of a brother’s belly, I asked if he was struggling with porn and he confirmed it. In the case of the local pastor, his evil deeds soon became evident and were exposed. In the case of T.B. Joshua, there is much evidence contrary to the accusations to confirm the discernment that they were slander.

I don’t have any great personal reason to defend T.B. Joshua, he’s no longer alive, and he’s not above criticism. However, the spirit I saw in his life was so contrary to the spirit I see in those who abuse the church. Humility, not arrogance. Serving rather than wanting everyone to serve him. Associating with lowly people. Why does it matter if the BBC documentary is true or not? A shadow is being cast on other ministers, still alive, who learned from T.B. Joshua.

Negative things are going around about Pastor Vlad Savchuk and the Hungry Gen church he leads, because he was influenced by T.B. Joshua. I’ve seen some videos of their church on YouTube. It’s not even my thing, too institutional for me, and I’m tired of endless programs. But I still think it’s important to recognize that the Holy Spirit is working there, that the healing and deliverance happening there is the work of the Holy Spirit, and I honor Him and what He is doing.

It’s extremely important to receive those the Lord sends, and to refuse to receive the wicked. Many who receive the wicked fail to receive those who Jesus sends. Those who want a serial adulterer back as their pastor often fail to receive someone who comes with a servant heart and in the power of the Spirit. But when we receive those who Jesus sends, we receive Jesus.

I’m not really part of the religious culture of Vlad and the Hungry Gen church, and not even so much of T.B. Joshua’s church. I don’t have to adapt to their culture, but I recognize the Holy Spirit working in both places. And what matters isn’t what I think. What matters is the Holy Spirit’s perspective on things, and I want my perspective to be aligned with His perspective. That often takes looking past mere appearances and yielding our feelings and prejudices to the Holy Spirit.

John 7:24 (NIV) Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.

Appearances can deceive us. I see in the spirit that a person has a cyst in the knee, but if I don’t see them limping it’s tempting to look at appearances rather than what I see in the spirit and so hesitate to ask them about that knee. I’ve often had my natural mind protest when I received a word of knowledge for healing!

What happens when you see a spirit of lust in a person’s belly, but your natural minds says “It can’t be! He’s a respected pastor!” It may seem to many that a certain person is a man of God, blessed by the Lord and prospering in ministry, but the reality is that he is living in rebellion against Jesus. On the other hand, it may appear that so many accusations against a person may be true, as it appeared to many that Mary the mother of Jesus cheated on Joseph, or that Joseph in the Old Testament sexually assaulted Potiphar’s wife. But don’t look at mere appearances. Test the spirits, and let the Lord bring to light the things that are hidden in darkness. Good discernment takes humility and care so as not to be presumptuous. I don’t want to receive the wicked, and neither do I want to be found opposing someone who is a servant of Christ!

2nd John verses 9-11 warns us that he who receives a wicked man who does not continue in the teaching of Christ participates in his wicked work. On the other hand, the epistle of 3rd John warns us that refusing to welcome other believers is also wicked. To receive those who Jesus sends is to receive Jesus! This is why it is important to discern both light and darkness in relation to the spirit that a person is walking in!

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Discerning Between True and False Accusations

Guys, lately there have been a lot of sex scandals in the church, including the one with Mike Bickle. I have seen many of these situations before, and it was sad to see once again how many in the church idolize celebrity pastors and seem to care more for the perpetrator of abuse than for the victim. It was sad to see once again how many are willing to cover up what they know is happening in order to protect the religious organization. And it was sad to see once again how many people are quick to treat the victim as if they were the villain, and the abuser as if they were the victim.

Not long after the Mike Bickle scandal, the pastor of the local church here was caught making sexual advances and exposing himself to a young woman who came for counseling. Then something came out in the news that at least 20 women had come forth with allegations since then, but it seems to have been removed, probably because of threats of legal action against the newspaper.

I thought of writing about the issue of systems that foster abuse instead of confronting it, and about discerning false apostles and leaders who are walking in the flesh, but I felt the Holy Spirit was saying it wasn’t time yet. If I had just written then, I might have presented a very one-sided perspective. I didn’t imagine that we would soon be dealing with a situation in which the accusations really were just slander. But now allegations against the influential Nigerian pastor T.B. Joshua have also come out, and this seems to be a very different story. Now I believe it’s time to write, not only about discerning the false, but about discerning what is true. We need to be wise, not presumptuous, quick to listen, and slow to speak.

The Scandal At Our Local Church

Some of you know part of the back story if you’ve been reading my blog for a while. I became involved in this church because of their mission groups, knowing that the whole system was broken but feeling that it wasn’t as bad as many other ones because it was less controlling. I wasn’t there for the leaders, but for the people and the missions. My wife was attending long before me. I work on Sunday, so my involvement has mostly been missions outreaches, the men’s group, barbecues, and more. Many people have been receiving healing and deliverance at such events.

Around 2021, the founder was caught in a scandal and accused of sexual abuse, but it was determined in court to be simply an adulterous situation with someone who seduced him, morally wrong but not illegal. However, they rushed to “restore the pastor.” Due to twisted values, many churches rush to “restore” an abusive leader to an exaggerated statues that God never intended in the first place, but fail to honor or receive those who really love and serve God’s people.

Many people were coming to receive Christ. However, the church took a dangerous turn into greed, bringing many false apostles who were self-serving. People were seeing the miracles in my life and telling me I needed to talk to the pastor and telling him he should talk to me because the church needed what I was walking in and we could have a group to train people. However, the day we were supposed to meet I stood up and walked out of the meeting because there was a strong demonic manifestation as a false apostle they invited abused the people and even said “God hates you if you aren’t tithing.” I tell the story in the post “Don’t Muddy the Waters.”

I became an outsider to the top leaders, but many who were closer to me personally saw and welcomed the Holy Spirit’s work. I was going to the services on Thursday nights, but it always felt like I wasn’t edified, wasn’t edifying others, and was losing family time. Finally, I had a vision of a demonic manifestation of a dark cloud when they took the offering and stopped going to services. But the men’s group and missions groups were wonderful. Those groups and home meetings became where I stayed in fellowship.

The Lord spoke to me very strongly over the last few years about how seriously He sees greed and financial manipulation in the church. I shared some of that in the post “Don’t Participate in the Sin of Others by Giving in Manipulative Offerings.” I even gave a teaching at the church men’s group about it. I shared from Titus 1, 2nd Peter 2, and Jude about greedy teachers who are willing to teach human commands and make up prophecies to bring in the money. It was probably clear to everyone present that I was specifically referring to common practices that their church and its guest speakers regularly engaged in. I warned that Scripture describes these greedy teachers as having “eyes full of adultery,” that Scripture treats greed as seriously as the sin of adultery, and that what these teachers were doing was a form of spiritual adultery.

Then a few months ago, my wife and daughter were saying how much they loved the pastor and asked why I didn’t like him. I said “It’s not that I don’t like him. I care about him. But he is living in rebellion against Jesus and you shouldn’t call him your pastor.”

It was only a few weeks later that the scandal became public. My wife was hurt and shocked. But I wasn’t surprised. I had warned her and others!

I rebuked the church in an Instagram live, saving and sharing the video. The church wanted to go on acting as if nothing had happened and this was just the sin of one man. But I told them they can’t keep going like nothing happened, and the whole church needs to repent. They needed to repent, first, of ignoring the Biblical qualifications for an elder. They needed to repent because many people knew what was happening and covered it up, thinking they were “protecting the church.” That’s what happens when you call an institution the church instead of understanding that the church is God’s people! They put people in danger to protect the system and were still hiding as much as they could of how bad it was. They disobeyed the scriptures that say to rebuke an elder who keeps sinning in the presence of all, and to expose the works of darkness, but instead lived in lies and darkness. I said other leaders who covered this up should resign. I learned that in the previous incident years ago, it was actually three women who brought allegations and the woman who went to court said she talked to all of the pastors about what happened and they said “Satan is using his mouth, but you need to forgive him to protect the church.” They hid it!

I also rebuked the church for accepting the sin of covetousness and said it would be obvious to them that the pastor was walking in the flesh if they had not accepted the sin of covetousness. And they were continuing to accept many other covetous teachers who have eyes full of adultery, serve only themselves, and abuse God’s flock. I named a few of these false apostles and gave reasons why, such as abuse and heretical teaching. Their churches operate like criminal organizations in the kingdom of darkness with lies, threats, and deceit. I told the church they needed to repent of participating in these people’s evil works by welcoming them.

As I made the video, I felt the Spirit of God flowing through me and power and love flowing through my mouth in the very same way as when I minister healing, rebuke a disease, or preach the gospel. Some liked the video or agreed, but I heard the church leaders were furious! Some wanted to sue me. But the video was made in pure love, pleading with people to repent.

The Works of the Flesh are Obvious

Galatians 5:19-21 (NIV) The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

1 Timothy 5:24-25 (NIV) The sins of some are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not obvious cannot remain hidden forever.

Many people are surprised about allegations of misconduct, but they shouldn’t be because the works of the flesh were evident in that situation. Where you see one work of the flesh, there are probably more. But the distorted values of much of religious institutionalism blind people to what should be obvious.

In my rebuke to the church, I said that greed isn’t about having lots of money or little money, or about whether or not a person likes nice cars, but greed is about being willing to compromise the truth for financial gain. The two primary ways we see this in scripture are by using human commands and teachings to take the offering (Titus 1) and by false prophesy or prophesy from a different spirit meant to bring in the money. (2nd Peter 2 and Jude.) And scripture describes greedy teachers as having eyes full of adultery. The greed, selfish ambition, arrogance, dissensions, factions, fits of rage, and envy were evident, and are so often evident when there is a sex scandal, so in most cases, people should not have been surprised that there was also adultery. If they had not been idolizing preachers and had not accepted many other works of the flesh, they would have easily discerned that person was walking in the flesh.

Anyone who has read the Didache and other early church writings knows that the early church discerned who was true and who was false by the way they dealt with money! I can think of multiple other sex scandals in which pastors had to resign or be removed and people were shocked, but those pastors had embraced false prophecies and human commands in the offering time. One particular one in the last few years suggested that people could obtain their healing by what they put in the offering. Within a year, he was caught in adultery.

Many religious leaders are false brothers, false apostles, serving themselves. The church participates in their sin by receiving them. But not only are the works of the flesh obvious, but good deeds are also obvious. I believe this is why the Lord had me wait to write. We should not even need scandalous accusations to discern when someone is walking in the flesh, but on the other hand, we must learn to discern when the accusations are false and slanderous. Just as the works of the flesh were obvious in our local situation and many similar sex scandals, T.B. Joshua’s good deeds were obvious.

Some people seem to accept everything, and others seem to reject everything. But the Bible says to “Test all things; hold fast to what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.”

Discerning When Allegations Are False

I recently learned that BBC created a documentary series claiming that Prophet T.B. Joshua was leading a terrible cult. I didn’t know what to think at first. T.B. Joshua pastored Nigeria’s most influential church, and although I don’t have all the same beliefs as him, I have seen things that were commendable in his life and mentioned him in a positive light, especially in my book “The Trojan Horse of Tithing.” Soon after the allegations, someone asked me if I would like to remove T.B. Joshua’s name from my book. I wasn’t sure yet, but I decided to look into the allegations more.

I believe allegations of spiritual and/or sexual abuse should be taken seriously, not lightly dismissed, but should be tested. It seems such allegations in the US and Brazil where I live usually prove to be true. Even the way some people are defending T.B. Joshua makes me shudder, because some of them are simply saying “Let God judge,” “just ask God what kind of man he is,” and repeating other phrases that have often been used to silence victims in real cases of abuse like the one we just saw right here. I disagree with that kind of response and I think it’s useless and dangerous. I would much rather hear a response based on facts than a general “how dare you accuse this man!” Fortunately, enough people have provided strong evidence and testimony refuting multiple accusations against T.B. Joshua, and I am now convinced that those accusations are completely false and are in the context of religious persecution.

In fact, various other Nigerian pastors who have proven themselves to be wolves through sex scandals and spiritual abuse have been hostile towards T.B. Joshua and leveled accusations against him for a long time. In videos, I can see the soft look of compassion and love in T.B. Joshua’s eyes contrasting with the darkness in their eyes. Adeboye, another pastor I mentioned in the Trojan Horse of Tithing, is one of them. Adeboye is the pastor who preaches that anyone who doesn’t pay their tithe will go to hell and anyone who fails to preach tithing will go to hell. T.B. Joshua was persecuted by many in the religious establishment because he was of such a different spirit, in contrast to the greed and self-serving of so many others. Some other prominent pastors refused to send condolences to his family, and some even made statements celebrating his death. On the other hand, even some Muslim leaders sent condolences to Joshua’s family when he died. They respected him because of his care for the poor.

It’s sad that so many American Christians were quick to defend Mike Bickle and assume all allegations must be false before the facts became clear, yet automatically assumed all accusations against T.B. Joshua were true without ever testing them or hearing the other side. They were presumptuous to assume that Mike Bickle was innocent, and presumptuous to assume that T.B. Joshua was guilty. Much of the BBC documentary about Joshua has already been definitively proven to be lies.

T.B. Joshua was of such a different spirit than so many others who’ve been caught in scandals. It was evident in the way he handled money with integrity, cared for the poor, and did not engage in so many manipulative practices that are common elsewhere. One example is when T.B. Joshua refused the $1000 offering of a woman who was healed and got out of her wheelchair because it might look like she was giving money in exchange for the healing. He asked her to help him by giving the money to the poor instead.

Greed is usually, maybe even always a mark of these preachers involved in sex scandals, but it was conspicuously lacking in everything I saw of T.B. Joshua. Furthermore, several very powerful deliverance ministries have been tremendously influenced by him, including Daniel Adams and Mark Hemans of Jesus Encounters Ministries. These are not reasons to automatically dismiss allegations, but they are reasons to pause, test all things, and not be presumptuous.

When Mark Hemans shared Wise Man Harry’s response to the allegations against Joshua, I especially paid attention. I love Jesus but I’ve seen so much abuse and I have no tolerance for greed and manipulation and little patience for mere human religion, I just want to hear about Jesus, and Jesus Encounter Ministries has been one of the purest ministries I’ve seen. Simple and preaching Christ with power.

I’ve heard several responses to the BBC documentary and so far one allegation after another from BBC has been definitively proven false or at least seriously called into question by video evidence, document evidence, and the firsthand testimony of multiple people. Following are a few examples with links to videos. You can click the links and watch them if you’re interested.

Ajoke claimed she was T.B. Joshua’s biological daughter with a woman who was not his wife, and he refused to acknowledge her. No. As proven by a police report and video of the day she was found with people saying what happened, and multiple witnesses, Ajoke is not Joshua’s biological daughter but was a baby who was abandoned and he adopted, and the real story of what happened is quite different. Here you can see more of the very people in the documentary on video contradicting each other’s claims and their own words about Ajoke by saying how much T.B. Joshua loved her (in contrast to saying he hated her in the documentary) and testifying that she was found as an abandoned baby and adopted. (In contrast to the claim that she was his biological daughter born out of wedlock.)

Listen to Wiseman Harry and other people giving first-hand testimony. Hear the other side of the story. And Wiseman Daniel’s testimony. T.B. Joshua had male disciples around him 24/7, and there was no way he could have been with women without them knowing it. Women who lived there testify that they weren’t even allowed to go anywhere alone without another lady and the allegations are absurd. Various women who lived at the Synagogue Church of All Nations are upset about the allegations and giving positive testimony of their experience. Hear the testimony of one lady responding to the allegation that T.B. Joshua had all the young virgins brought to him to “de-virgin” them. She says she came to the church as a virgin, she was still a virgin when she left, and there was never anything inappropriate. T.B. Joshua treated her like a daughter. She also testified that the miracles were real, and she was one of those who interviewed the people who were healed. In fact, when it was first released, the BBC documentary was flooded with comments from people saying they were healed when they visited the church!

Hear the real story behind some of T.B. Joshua’s accusers, including Agomah Paul and Besola Johnson, with video evidence of their own testimony contradicting their claims in the BBC documentary: At 22:56, watch the video of the event in which Besola Johnson claimed she was laid on the floor and beaten mercilessly. She was not beaten or mistreated. Rather, she was confessing to her own evil behavior. Some have testified that Besola Johnson believed she would replace T.B. Joshua’s wife at some point. Since T.B. Joshua remained faithful to his wife, she seems to have become enraged with him as Potiphar’s wife did with Joseph. The whole situation reminds me of Shawn Bolz sharing in one of his books about how he became a victim of stalking by girls who thought God told them they would marry him.

Another accuser has a reputation of seducing, accusing, and blackmailing many men and claims to have slept with almost every pastor she ever met, not just T.B. Joshua. She would try to seduce pastors to compromise them, recording videos to blackmail them when successful. The video I linked to includes as an example, a clip she recorded of herself beside a certain pastor who was snoring. Although she intentionally sought to record such compromising videos of others, she hasn’t produced any such compromising video of T.B. Joshua, yet has come out three years after his death with allegations of wrongdoing. Why? I would like a full disclosure about any money BBC that paid her and other participants in their documentary! At 25:42 into this video, see a repentant man confessing how he was involved in witchcraft and would go to great lengths, along with other journalists, to make up false accusations against T.B. Joshua. Here is the testimony of Joseph David who worked for 27 years in the ministry, met all the accusers except for Besola Johnson, and knew how most of them came and how they left.

Angie who accused T.B. Joshua of not letting her get married has her wedding recorded on video…and T.B. Joshua is the one who performs and blesses the wedding! And nobody was imprisoning her…the real story is quite different. Angie’s brother who was with T.B. Joshua for 17 years testifies that the accusations do not match his experience. He saw the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit at his time there.

I haven’t found any allegation against T.B. Joshua to be credible. Rather, the more we learn, the more it seems that the accusers all have strong ulterior motives.

It’s Scripture That We Can Expect False Accusations Against Righteous People

There have always been scoundrels, wolves, false workers, and pastors who feed only themselves. It’s nothing new.
There have also always been persecutions, false accusations, and slander against righteous people. According to the Bible, this is to be expected.

In First Kings 21, Ahab and Jezebel had false witnesses speak against righteous Naboth in order to seize his vineyard. Judas betrayed Jesus for money. Matthew 26:59 tells of how the Chief Priests and Sanhedrin looked for false evidence/testimony against Jesus to put him to death and “many false witnesses came forward.” Then in Matthew 28:12, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money to give false testimony denying Jesus’ resurrection. In Acts 6:13, they presented false witnesses against Stephen in order to kill him. Mark 14:56-59 also says MANY people falsely testified against Jesus, but their testimony did not agree. And the testimonies of the people in the BBC documentary against T.B. Joshua in many cases do not agree with THEIR OWN WORDS on video!

Jesus said in Matthew 5:11-12 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you.” Slander is actually to be expected against anybody who lives a godly life, because scripture says that anyone who lives a godly life will be persecuted. (2nd Timothy 3:12)

T.B. Joshua has faced tremendous opposition from witchcraft, as many people doing deliverance ministry do. This usually involves false accusations. Thousands of Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria, and it is one of the worst places for persecution against Christians in the world. BBC has a known anti-Christian bias. It produced the documentary in collaboration with Open Democracy, a group funded by George Soros’ radical Open Society Foundation. It has been common for communist regimes and other governments hostile to Christians to fabricate evidence and accusations against Christian leaders. It happened regularly to many pastors behind the Iron Curtain…false accusations that they cheated on their wives, stole money, or anything to destroy them.

Opposition from false brothers. Opposition from witchcraft. Opposition from those promoting godless or pagan philosophies. Slanderous accusations. T.B. Joshua faced all of this, as did the apostle Paul and as many others who were sent by Jesus have faced. It’s time to wake up to the reality of persecution against God’s work in our world today, even in our own countries!

The triggers of persecution in Jesus’ ministry and in the books of Acts were often healing and deliverance ministry. Paul was beaten after a girl was delivered from a demon. Torben Sondergaard was persecuted for deliverance in Europe and a documentary was made deliberately distorting what happened and presenting a totally different picture. It is so clear it was false if you hear both sides of the story, but a law was made against him, he fled to the United States, and then was imprisoned for over a year with no clear charges, no evidence, and no trial. Senator Clay Higgins even made a statement about it as a case of religious persecution in the United States. Man of God Harry, one of Joshua’s disciples, was arrested in Greece for “operating the church without a license” and has been constantly harrased and threatened to stop doing deliverance ministry. And we are now seeing how many accusations against Donald Trump have been proven to be absurd and government agencies have been caught fabricating evidence and hiding exculpatory evidence to prosecute him and other political targets.

In the case of T.B. Joshua, many Christians have been caught off guard because of so many real scandals and have fallen for false accusations. It is just like Satan to both sow false apostles who create scandals, and at the same time sow false accusations against those who are true to create confusion. It would be appropriate to repent if we have been presumptuous, quick to speak but slow to listen, and too ready to believe accusations without testing them. I hope this post raises awareness of what is happening. When you see a documentary coming out trashing some Christian…take the time to test it and discern if it is true or if these are slanderous accusations. As Proverbs 8:17 says, the first to present his case seems right until he is cross-examined!

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Blind And Deaf So You Can See And Hear!

The Last Month and a Half

After the last blog post, I went with the first missions group to Jandaia ladies’ recovery house on a Wednesday night. It was glorious! People were being healed one after another through words of knowledge. That mission group is the one that I was first involved in. They do missions much more infrequently, and the people haven’t yet understood very well that God’s power is for all Christians, not just a special few with a “spiritual gift.”

The Sunday before our trip to the US, someone asked me to come to the local Sunday morning service to pray for a lady with two herniated disks. I work on Sundays, but this time my classes started later so I could at least stay for a good portion of the service and then have to leave early for work.

They always have breakfast before the Sunday morning meeting. Before breakfast, people asked me to pray for a young guy. I shared an encouragement with him and he physically felt God’s glory on his body. Then we got in line for breakfast. As we were standing there, I saw a lady in another part of the building with green shorts and had the impression that she had a problem with her right hip. I noted her and then I decided I’d look for her later.

Immediately after we got our food, I started shaking and weeping because I felt God’s love for the people around me. I’m so thankful for the Holy Spirit’s influence on my life! It was like it just took over me. I prayed silently, God, you are the Guide. Show me what you want to do.” As I was praying, I felt that the lady I was walking past had a stomach problem. I set down my food and asked if I could pray for her. She said “OK, prayer is good.” I replied “I felt that I should pray for your stomach.” She said “Yes, I have an infection in my stomach.” We prayed and the pain was gone.

Then I found the lady with the green shorts, sitting with her husband. I asked about her right hip. She had such pain in her hip that she wasn’t sleeping at night. I said “Jesus is healing your hip right now.” In a moment, she was weeping and walking with no pain.

I saw another older lady a few rows up and asked if she’d accept prayer. She had bad pain in her leg and a blind eye. We prayed, I took her hand, and she got up and walked without pain. Then we were praying and I was feeling God’s power going into her eye, but the worship was starting and it was too loud to talk, so I just thanked the Lord for his power remaining on her and went to my seat.

After about half an hour, the person with the two herniated disks arrived and they pulled me out to a Sunday school room to pray for her. She started twisting and fell on the floor. We prayed for maybe half an hour and many demons came out of her. The back pain was also gone. And we prayed and God healed her husband’s back as well. She was so relieved to be free from the demons oppressing her that she kept saying “Thank you! Thank you Jesus!” It reminded me of the lady who Jesus cast so many demons out of, and then she came back and washed his feet with her tears.

I had to leave early to work, but I was crying for the next two hours as I worked. Jesus’ mighty works have quite an impact on my soul!

Then we went to the US. It was an exhausting trip, taking three flights with a baby on our laps, and I got sick on the way. Throughout the whole trip, it would seem like I was finally getting better but then I got worse again. I was exhausted. I won’t say too much about the trip except that it was really precious to see my family in Pennsylvania and New York after so many years and especially to see my parents meeting their grandchildren for the first time ever! One of the things that happened there was the Lord spoke to me about an elderly man’s eye and it turned out his retina was detaching. We prayed and the black spot that had been in his vision disappeared.

I was feeling quite tired throughout the trip and it was discouraging to be feeling like that when I was finally able to visit the US again. I wished I could have been visiting for three months, not just two weeks. I had to keep reminding myself of simple truths like “God loves me. He is for me, not against me.”

I have been watching the Jesus Encounter Ministries meetings since 2016 and was longing to finally go to an in-person meeting. We went to their meeting in New Jersey, near New York City. My dad fell on the floor during worship and felt the Lord healing him of some problems he’d had with his thyroid and breathing. He received prayer later and went crashing to the floor again. My nine-year-old daughter fell on the ground holding a ball in her hand when she received prayer, my wife was touched by God’s peace, and some of the other people I brought received. In spite of being exhausted, I was weeping much of the time as I saw what God did for others.

I had gone determined to receive by faith whether or not I felt anything. Sometimes we receive from the Lord and don’t even realize it until later. But I really would have loved to be blasted to the floor with God’s power, or receive a prophecy. In fact, I was feeling kind of desperate. “I’m coming all the way from Brazil to this meeting because I need help!” And I did receive prayer, but I didn’t feel anything. And in spite of being exhausted and having to remind myself “God loves me. He will never leave me or forsake me,” I was praying back at the hotel for my friends and God was moving in power.

The trip back from the US was even more exhausting. We missed our third flight because the airline had trouble printing the baby’s boarding pass, and the airline staff kept sending us in circles to get the situation resolved. We paid for a temporary room at the airport to try to rest a little while we were waiting. I had been feeling almost better and now felt sick again. We were finally home after 38 hours, but without our luggage! Then the airline staff were saying contradictory things about where our luggage was, and we felt fears assailing us that we would lose most of our clothes and many other things in our luggage!

We had a mission on Saturday to Elohin ladies’ recovery house, where the Lord had already done many miracles before. I hate missing a mission, but I thought “I won’t be able to go this time. I’m feeling too bad.” However, on Saturday we found our luggage had arrived and we went to the airport to pick it up. I had rested and was feeling much better. And as we were in the car, I got a word of knowledge about a lady at the recovery house who had a heart problem and she would die early if not for the Lord healing her. So I felt the Lord was leading me to go.

I really was feeling mostly better, except for an itch deep in my lungs that would make me cough. But I thought I was finally better now and that was just something left over that would soon be gone too.

It was so good to be with my friends in the car, blaring worship music on the way. The men’s group in the US had been so dry in comparison! I received a few other words of knowledge and all of them hit the target. The lady was there who recently had a heart incident (heart attack?) and was feeling pain in her chest ever since. I had an impression about asking a certain young missionary girl to pray for her. After different people received prayer, I went to the lady who had the heart issue and asked what happened. All the pain was gone, but she was limping! The heart problem had been healed, but she also had a problem in her leg. I prayed, cried out “Jesus,” and blew on her leg. It immediately went numb. A few minutes later she came back and said “Look! I’m not limping!” The rest of the night was glorious. We kept praying for people for about another hour and there was one miracle after another.

I could barely sleep that night. My chest was so tight, it was hard to breathe! I had thought I was better again, and now I was feeling like this! The voice of fear was saying “You’ll never get over it!” I was feeling so bad that I lost my breath speaking, and I had to cancel as many English classes as I could. I don’t like taking antibiotics, but my wife consulted a doctor on the phone and she thought it was a bacterial infection in my lungs. But halfway through the treatment with antibiotics, I got so sick to the stomach I was throwing up all night. I had to stop the antibiotics. Again, the voice of fear was assailing me. “You’ll never get over this! And how are you going to keep going? How are you going to keep living in Brazil? You didn’t get your answer at the conference!” I hadn’t received the answers I’d hoped for on my trip to the United States. And I kept reminding myself. “God is faithful. He will never forsake me. He will restore, strengthen, and establish me.”

Breathing was so difficult and I was still cancelling many of my classes. I finally tried chewing two raw cloves of fresh garlic and holding it under my tongue. I felt it shoot through my body and almost vomited because the garlic was so strong. But the stomach discomfort passed after a few minutes and I felt my lungs open up. It was way more effective than any of those medicines! I’ve been feeling much better ever since and I just went to Casa da Paz on Wednesday night again.

Hear, you Deaf! Look, you Blind!

Much of Isaiah 42 is a prophecy about Jesus, and I believe the “servant of the Lord” refers to Jesus in this passage. I don’t think I ever understood this very well until I heard Mark Hemans preach on it, and it was revelation to me. (I’d share the message if I could find which one it was!)

Isaiah 42:16-17 I will lead the blind by ways they have not known,
    along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;
I will turn the darkness into light before them
    and make the rough places smooth.
These are the things I will do;
    I will not forsake them.
But those who trust in idols,
    who say to images, ‘You are our gods,’
    will be turned back in utter shame.
“Hear, you deaf;
    look, you blind, and see!
Who is blind but my servant,
    and deaf like the messenger I send?
Who is blind like the one in covenant with me,
    blind like the servant of the Lord?
You have seen many things, but you pay no attention;
    your ears are open, but you do not listen.”

To hear what God is saying and see what God is seeing, we so often have to be blind to the appearances of what things seem to be naturally, and deaf to what people with merely human wisdom and saying. Jesus didn’t judge by mere appearances, but he judged with right judgement. Man sees the outward appearances, but God sees the heart. So it was like Jesus was deaf and blind to what many others saw, but he heard what the Father was saying and saw what the Father was doing. And in a way, we must also become deaf and blind in order to hear the Lord’s voice and see what He sees. Things often seem one way, but God’s perspective is different.

The doctrine of the hypostatic union states that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man. Although Jesus is God, he became like one of us, with every weakness we have. Although God is all-powerful, Jesus became weak and could do nothing of himself but had to fully rely on the Father. He received ministry from angels and from people. Although God cannot be tempted, Jesus was tempted. So although God is also all-knowing, could Jesus’ incarnation and humanity mean that he didn’t always know how things would work out? Yes, he knew where he came from and where he was going. He knew he would be put to death and rise again. But did he see every detail of how this was going to happen? Or did Jesus also have to trust the Father even when he didn’t fully understand, as we do?

I didn’t get the answers I hoped for in the United States. I don’t know how everything will work out. I’m going down an unfamiliar path. It seems like darkness before me, but the Lord will turn the darkness into light and make the rough places smooth. I don’t see in the natural. I’m blind, but I must trust the Lord. I must learn to pay no attention to the impossibilities and obstacles I see, as if I’m blind to them, and not listen to the voices of fear and anxiety, as if I’m deaf to them.

I was talking to a young guy who has been assailed by demonic torment and struggled to hold on to hope. He was hearing the voices of fear and accusation, and I encouraged him with God’s promises. Then I said “Guess what? You’re not the only one who deals with this! In the last month I’ve had to be deaf to the voice of the enemy and choose to trust God as well!”

You see, some people might assume that a person who has been experiencing so many miracles would never have to stand firm in faith or remind himself “God is faithful. He loves me. He is for me.” But it’s not true! We never get to the point where we see and understand everything and don’t have to walk by faith. You will always have to walk by faith.

And in a way, faith is blind because it’s the evidence of things not seen. Faith hear and sees from heaven and ignores the way things seem. They told Jesus a little girl was dead, but he was deaf to their words. When he came to the girl, Jesus was blind to what everyone else saw and said she was sleeping. They laughed, but he said “Little girl, get up!” And she did.

If you walk in faith, naturally-minded people will think “Doesn’t he understand? Doesn’t he see? Didn’t he hear what we said?” But you are hearing what the Father says and seeing what the Father sees.

The natural mind says “You were just sick for all that time. How can you pray for others who are sick?” It says “That person you prayed for died of cancer. How can you pray for the next one?” It says “Look at everything you’re going through. Is God really still with you? Does God care?” It says “Your mother-in-law is so sick, she’s out of her mind, and it’s been like this for so long. How can you minister to people on the street when she hasn’t been healed?” It accuses God, saying “This situation has gone on for so long. Why hasn’t God’s rescued you yet?”

“Jonathan, how have you seen so many miracles? You can tell testimonies all day and they never end.” It’s not because my life has been easy. But I’ve learned (and still am learning) to become blind and deaf to the natural way of reasoning, understanding, and sensing things. God’s word must grip my soul until I’m deaf to the voices of accusation, fear, anxiety, and unbelief. To see what God sees, I must pay no attention to many other things that I see. To hear what God is saying, I must not listen to what so many other voices are saying. To the one who thinks and senses things naturally, a person who is walking in faith seems blind and deaf. But the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom! To hear God’s voice, become deaf to the static. Turn off the other channels and tune in to His!

John 9:39 (NIV) Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

Become blind and deaf so you can see and hear!

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Are You Preaching The Whole Gospel Or Only That Jesus Died?

A few days ago I saw a Christian Instagram post in Portuguese saying that we cannot follow our hearts because they are desperately wicked. It quoted Jeremiah 17:9 (NIV): “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” I commented that this verse is true of unbelievers, for for believers God removes that old heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh that is inclined to obey him. God doesn’t “cure” the old, hard heart. He removes it and gives us a new heart!

Ezekiel 33:26-27 (NIV) I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

I explained that of course we still have to guard our hearts and test what is in our hearts by God’s word, but if we are in Christ and walking in communion with Him, the inclination of our heart is towards righteousness. One of the ways God will often speak and move through us by the Holy Spirit is by moving our hearts, so we should not think that as Christians every inclination of our heart is towards evil. That mentality hinders many Christians from hearing and obeying God’s voice. When I pray for people, I often say “I feel in my heart that…” And they often confirm that what I said is true.

In the Instagram comments it became clear that the scriptural declaration that God gives us a new heart inclined to follow Him means nothing to some Christians. Many church people think as if they have been forgiven to go to heaven but they will still always be desperately wicked, sinners, not saints. And when you show them verses in scripture about receiving a new heart or being a new creation in Christ, they don’t know what to do with it because it is so contrary to their paradigm.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

As I was thinking about this, I realized that almost every gospel presentation I have heard someone give since I moved to Goias was only about Jesus’ death, not about his resurrection and incarnation. And while it is essential to preach Jesus’ death for our forgiveness and redemption, the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus are just as essential.

Many people talk about the “simple gospel.” And I agree, it is simple. But the local church where I live has largely oversimplified it. They have left out some of the essential points of the gospel.

Jesus’ died for our forgiveness. He resurrected to give us newness of life. He died in weakness. He was resurrected by God’s power. He died to rescue us from the dominion of darkness. He resurrected to bring us into His kingdom. The good news Jesus preached was “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Colossians 1:13 (NIV) For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves,

Outreach In The Park

The next day we went out to evangelize in the park, and there were a bunch of goth teenagers with black nail polish drinking liquor. I think the other people in my group were afraid, but I went after them and started talking about God’s free gift of salvation. I prayed for some of them.

Seeing these guys broke my heart. They reminded me of the kids at my brother’s high school when I was younger. Drowning themselves in alcohol and orgies yet suicidal, angry, and depressed. Many would cut themselves.

The church here is preaching “Jesus died for your sins. He paid the price.” And that is so important, but it is not the full message. You see, if you only tell that to these kids, they will keep doing the same things and continue to be oppressed and walk in darkness. Jesus said “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The gospel is the good news. The good news is also that there is a new way of living! The gospel is that Jesus rescues us from the dominion of darkness! The gospel is that Jesus rose from the dead to give us new lives and new hearts! The gospel is that Jesus came not only to forgive us from sin, but to rescue us from our sins! To preach Jesus’ resurrection, you must preach the new creation and the new life that is in Him!

Matthew 1:21 (NIV) She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,because he will save his people from their sins.”

1 Peter 1:18 (NIV)  For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors

Preaching Repentance and Jesus’ Resurrection

Jesus’ resurrection is power, authority, a new love, dominion in life, victory. Much of the church doesn’t even believe that. They believe “We’ll always keep sinning, because we’re sinners.” Many church people can’t even imagine that a victorious Christian life is possible by the power of Jesus’ resurrection.

The church often preaches that Jesus died for our forgiveness, but has increasingly failed to preach why every person needs Jesus’ forgiveness. I no longer hear this:

Romans 3:23 (NIV) for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

Proverbs 14:12 (RSV) There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.

Our message must be “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”What does that mean? The good news (gospel) is that there is a new way of doing things! A new reality! A new order! Why are you so miserable, depressed, afflicted? The orgies, the drunkenness, the greed, the way you were going seemed right but it is leading you to death. Jesus by his death has dealt a death blow to the old, and by his resurrection, Jesus is offering you a new life and a new order.

If we don’t preach that, people will raise their hands to be forgiven and go to heaven someday, but they fail to enter the new order. They stay bound by Satan, afflicted. They don’t know the reality of God’s kingdom, of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. They feel they are just suffering because they are victims.

It’s no good to only preach Jesus’ death in your gospel presentation but fail to preach his resurrection! Yet many only talk about his death! Many people’s “Christianity” virtually ignores Jesus’ resurrection!

1 Corinthians 15:14, 17 (NIV) And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith…And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 

The result of only preaching “Jesus died for your sins” without preaching “Jesus resurrected to give you a new life” is that the people are still in their sins! They are still oppressed by the devil! To preach Jesus’ death and forget his resurrection is to preach a form of godliness but deny the power thereof!

What Is The Goal Of The Gospel?

I often feel that the local church here thinks the main goal of evangelism is to get people to raise their hands so they can get into heaven. But Jesus didn’t say “make converts.” He said the Pharisees crossed land and sea to make a single convert who became twice as much a child of hell as they were! Jesus said to make disciples! And although salvation does include being rescued from hell and going to heaven, that’s not the primary goal of salvation. The primary goal of salvation is transformation and entering communion with God, that mankind would once again reflect God’s image and return to knowing him.

John 17:3 (NIV) Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

We Cannot Fully Preach The Gospel Without Power!

Jesus’ commands to heal the sick and cast out demons were part and parcel of his instructions on preaching the gospel. These instructions were to be passed on a future disciples. It is unbiblical to think that we can preach the gospel as Jesus commanded without healing and deliverance. It’s nowhere in scripture!

1 Corinthians 4:20 (NIV) For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.

Romans 15:19 (NIV) …by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2:4-5 (NIV) My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

The demonstration of power is especially related to preaching Jesus’ incarnation and Jesus’ resurrection. The highly effective international evangelist T.L. Osborn would often preach to people from different religions who didn’t have the cultural background so as to simply respect what the Bible says. So he would tell them “The way you can know that what I’m saying is true and that Jesus has risen from the dead is that if Jesus rose from the dead, he will do today what he did in the time of the gospels.” Then the lame would walk, the blind would see, and the deaf would hear. The people would see that Jesus rose from the dead and many would repent and put their faith in Christ! It is the resurrection of Jesus that brings us into the place of power and authority.

The demonstration of power also accompanies the message of the incarnation, because the incarnation is the declaration that God is with us, his temple is in man, and he gives authority to men. We can see God’s invisible nature in Christ. God seems so far off and mysterious, but when Jesus came as a man, the blind saw, the deaf heard, the mute spoke, and the lame leaped like deer! The gospel is about people meeting Jesus, not just assenting to a doctrine that is presented to them!

People Can Encounter Jesus When They Meet Us!

One of our outreaches in the last month was to a drug and alcohol recovery house about an hour from here. I had been there maybe a year ago. When I walked in the gate, there was a guy on each side. I greeted them and I saw into the body of the guy on the left. His intestines was a mess! I went back and asked “How’s your intestines?” and he confirmed it. He had digestive problems and couldn’t eat certain foods. He felt the Lord touching his body as we prayed, and then I saw into his left shoulder. Actually, I had felt there would be a guy with a problem in the left shoulder before we even went. Now I saw it was him. He confirmed it and lifted his left arm all the way up with no pain!

Later they brought me a guy who was limping. I prayed and the pain was less, but he was about to walk off and I said “Wait!” Let me pray again! He didn’t seem to have strong faith. I had to insist. That’s God’s love and mercy pursuing people. And this time he said he felt no more pain.

I was praying for other people in the back and suddenly I saw they were sharing a testimony in the front of a guy healed of deafness. (Partial deafness) It was the same guy I’d prayed for who was limping! But the great part that was so encouraging to me was that I hadn’t prayed for his ears! The other young missionaries prayed for his hearing and God restored it! In fact, I think it was the first mission of one of the young ladies and she felt heat coming off of her hand towards his ears. I love when it’s not about me, but it’s just about Jesus being among us and moving through his people.

The man said he was now hearing perfectly. Another guy living at the recovery house was confirming everything to me. “We had to shout for him to understand us!” Maybe the reason he was about to walk off before was really because he couldn’t hear what I was saying.

There were many other healing miracles. Several people only asked for prayer for their families, not for themselves. Maybe they felt like they didn’t deserve to receive anything from the Lord. It’s not about what we deserve, but what Jesus deserves! God showed me that they really did have needs, like healing of acid reflux or tooth pain. Again and again, heaven crashing into people’s lives.

As in many places, a lot of people at that recovery house knew the religious talk and could parrot the doctrine they’d heard, but they were not living as if it were true that God is with us, that Jesus rose to give us new life, and that Jesus died so we could approach the Father without shame.

We need a presentation of the gospel that doesn’t just reach people’s minds, but that impacts their hearts! Good doctrine isn’t enough! If we really believe the message, Jesus manifests himself through it! It is not empty words, but the Spirit of Jesus is manifest through the message!

The post Are You Preaching The Whole Gospel Or Only That Jesus Died? appeared first on Go to Heaven Now!.

Jesus Is Breaking Hearts For The Unreached Peoples of Brazil

The More You Walk in God’s Power, The More You Become Aware of Your Dependence on God!

In our last post, we talked about brokenness and walking in God’s glory. This brokenness is an attitude of humility in which we depend completely on God to do what we cannot do. Humility is not only helplessness in our own power, but it is trusting God to rescue us and give us his power when we can do nothing of ourselves. God gives grace (power) to the humble.

John 15:4-5 No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Humility depends on God’s power, not on your own ability. Many people are involved in religious activity in their own ability, and they have no notion of their need for God’s power. All they accomplish is with mere human ability. Then there are people who God’s power is flowing through. Think of Heidi Baker. Thousands of churches, blind seeing, deaf hearing, and people raised from the dead.

You would think that those who are lacking power should be the most desperate and understanding of their need for God’s empowerment. And that people who are living lives of miracles…at least they are experiencing much more than others do, so their need is not as great.

But it’s the opposite. The ones who God’s power is flowing through the most are the ones who are most aware of their need. People like Heidi Baker are the ones who cry aloud “Help me Jesus! I can’t go on without you! I can’t do this if the Holy Spirit doesn’t move!” I am not talking about knowing our “need” as if we were lacking anything in Christ, but about knowing our dependence on the Holy Spirit’s empowerment. It is about knowing that mere human strength is not enough. This is the same attitude of humility that Jesus had. Although he was Heir to heaven’s riches, he could do nothing of himself and had to fully depend on the Father, so he cried out with loud cries and supplications.

God Breaks His People’s Hearts To Reach The Lost

There is often weeping, wailing, and brokenness preceding revival and great missionary movements. God breaks people’s hearts for the lost. It is a supernatural compassion, groans that go beyond words, and God uses it to release his power. I’ve experienced this at missions conferences and at the Voice of the Apostles conference in the past, and I’ve been praying for it among the young people in our missions group. It’s holy. Sometimes I pray, “Jesus, if you want to cry through me, here I am.”

Well, our group had a missions conference and I saw the Lord answering my prayer. I was all tears most of the time. And many of the young people were weeping with Jesus’ compassion for the lost. I was also happy that the guest speakers were three true apostles (people sent by Jesus) who were reaching some of the most unreached people in Brazil. They didn’t call themselves apostles, but that is what they were.

You see, at the first event of this missions group that I went to, before I was even a part of it, they had a false apostle as the guest speaker. He was the same man I mentioned before who said “God hates you if you aren’t tithing.” There are many false apostles, and the Bible commends those who recognize and discern between the true and the false. Many people have a religious idea of what it means to be an apostle, but it just means to be a servant sent by Jesus. “Missionary” is a translation of the word “apostle.” False apostles seek their own honor and want people to serve them. Brazil has many false apostles. True apostles are servants of all for the sake of Jesus Christ! I was so happy that the guests at the conference were true apostles laying down their lives with hearts broken for the lost.

Although much of Brazil is extremely well-evangelized, there are three large groups of people in Brazil that are considered largely “unreached.” Many people have never heard the gospel message. These are the indigenous people, those living in the sertão, and the ribeirinhos. The speakers at our conference represented two of these groups.

The Sertão

The sertão is a large semi-arid region covering several states in the Northeast of Brazil. It suffers from prolonged droughts and is known for the poverty and suffering of its inhabitants. Many people are bound in idolatry and spirit-worship. When we were in the region for a short time with my mother-in-law, she needed to use the bathroom on the way. There was nowhere to go, so we stopped at a house and offered them a little money to use their bathroom. But they didn’t have a bathroom! They were quite embarrassed. Their bathroom was a bucket in the backyard, which they allowed her to use for 10 reais! There are children who eat only once a day. There are young children who prostitute themselves for as little as 1 real (20 cents) in order to eat. Incest and sexual abuse are rampant. This is the region my friend Reinhard is moving to in order to rescue kids. He said he cried until he could cry no more when he saw the situation.

Pastor Alex is a missionary who moved to the sertão and is serving the whole community. (See his Instagram here.) He recently had a well drilled-about 100 meters down- to bring water to the community, and he is building a swimming pool for the kids. He has built houses for many families. He hosts a community meal for the children and brings food to families. He is involved in agricultural development, using hydroponics to grow lettuce and other crops. And he is bringing the gospel to people, breaking vicious cycles of sin and death. Transformation is happening in a community that was hell on earth for many children. But this needs to be reproduced in many other places! In Alex’s words, “We don’t have tithes on the sertão!” It’s not a place to be “successful in ministry” according to worldly standards. It’s a place to give your life. Alex has a broken heart, full of love and compassion, and he was sobbing almost the whole time he spoke.

Alex drilling for water Plates of food for hungry children!

I remember reading that Brazil was the #2 missionary-sending country in the world, after the United States, which was #1. But most of its missionaries were going to the United States! Not many want to go to the sertão, and those who do are not usually highly honored. But they are honored in heaven!

Our friend, Pastor Kleber from Brasilia, is going on a trip to the sertão in November. He had me pray for the pastor there on the phone and his whole body caught on fire with God’s glory! Kleber told me that this pastor’s family thought he was crazy when he moved to the sertão to bring the gospel there. We are going to send Bibles and food with Kleber and contribute a little to the trip. I was going to go along as well, but I couldn’t take off any more time from work! I just got back from preaching in another state, and I had to take off several days to do so. And we are going to visit the United States for Thanksgiving. It will be the first time my two daughters and my parents have ever met in person! My oldest daughter is 9 years old and has never met her grandparents except for talking on the phone!

The Ribeirinhos

Leandro and Alcir were the other speakers at the conference, and they both go regularly on trips to the Ribeirinhos for a few months at a time. (See Leandro’s Instagram for pictures)The Ribeirinhos are people who live by the rivers in the very north of Brazil. It’s hot, and they wear little clothing! If you bring bottles of cold water, people treat them like gold! They drink by dipping their cups directly in the warm river, and they’ve never had a cold bottle of water! Water-born diseases and parasites are rampant. The rivers are their roads, and they go from one place to another on boats. As in the sertão, there is lots of poverty, and incest is rampant. It’s common for parents to sell their children to be raped. And many people have never heard the gospel!

I sat at the table with Leandro and Alcir and listened to the conversation. Some others were asking questions. I heard Leandro say several things that I have learned from those wise and experienced in missions and church planting, but which are very difficult for people in our institutional churches to understand or accept! Leandro said “We don’t come bringing religion or saying we’re going to plant a church. We bring the gospel and let the gospel bring the transformation.” He explained how others had come with religion and built churches and instead of transforming the culture, they ruined the culture. If they were to say “we are here to plant a church,” people would think it was that whole story happening again, which brought religion and division to the community instead of bringing Jesus. (Of course, Jesus can be divisive! But all too often we impose a heavy burden of our religious culture on others which is an unnecessary stumbling block to keep them from coming to Jesus. Many things we think are Christianity are just our religious culture.)

Alex also described how incest has become normal to the Riberinhos. They go there and they see the father taking the daughter aside and they know what’s happening. But what can they do? People say “Why don’t you denounce it? Why don’t you talk to the police?” But even though it’s illegal, the reality is that the police chief has the same thing going on in his home. So they protect each other and nothing happens.

So what can the missionaries do? Love the people. And share the gospel and let the gospel break the vicious cycle passed down from generation to generation. Leandro says “The father gives his life to Jesus, and he stops abusing his children. The cycle is stopped. And the culture begins to be transformed.” We share the gospel and we trust the Holy Spirit to bring the transformation through God’s word.

Our missions group was going to go to the Ribeirinhos with Leandro and Alcir, this year, but the trip was postponed to later and then again to next year due to weather conditions. I mentioned this to you guys before and I wanted to do everything possible to go, but we haven’t been able to yet.

Jesus’ Heart is Full of Compassion!

The whole conference was full of tears, and this was an answer to my prayers. People are empowered by the Holy Spirit when supernatural compassion comes on them in God’s glory and they weep. The fields are ripe for harvest!

Near the end of the conference, at the dinner break, we started praying and people were being healed and feeling God’s fire come on them. And after the conference was over, I ended up praying for two of the missionaries. They felt God’s glory like a weight and God’s fire come on them, and I encouraged them to step out in ministering healing with evangelism. I was thankful that even though I still haven’t been able to go in the same way they are, God was able to impart something to them through me.

Will you pray with me for the unreached people of Brazil?

Jesus, send me! Send us!

The post Jesus Is Breaking Hearts For The Unreached Peoples of Brazil appeared first on Go to Heaven Now!.

Brokenness and Walking in God’s Glory

Guys, this month my thoughts have been going back to the topic of brokenness and trials with the release of God’s glory. In the last two years, I have seen more miracles through my life than even before. I want to explain how it happened, and how times of frustration and apparent failure actually formed something in me which led to this release of God’s power.

In Rio de Janeiro my wife and I faced very trying circumstances, and God taught me about Evergreen Life. I wrote a book and blog post about it. Eternal life is not only life forever, but it is also evergreen, meaning it flourishes in every season and circumstance. Evergreen life springs from the seed of God’s word. But there is a process called “stratification” that the seed goes through in able to be able to germinate. It includes extreme heat or cold. In fact, some evergreen seeds will never germinate unless they go through fire!

Jesus himself was tried and broken. The Bible says he prayed with loud cries and supplications! Jesus was a grain of wheat that fell to the ground and died. Wheat is threshed. Olives are crushed to make olive oil. It is often the pressure and trial that releases the life God has planted in us. Paul the apostle experienced the same, saying that we share in Christ’s sufferings so that we share in his glory, and that he was always being given over to death so that Christ’s life would be revealed in him, and so that he would no longer trust in himself but it God who raises the dead.

I want to show you some of the wonderful miracles that happened in the last month and explain what the release of God’s power was like, and has been like in these and so many other miracles. There are trials that come from external circumstances such as we faced in Rio de Janeiro. However, there is also a cry of the soul and brokenness that is formed by God’s promises!

A Blind Eye Opened, a Hernia Closed, and More!

There were many healings and deliverances in the last month, but here are some highlights. The videos are in Portuguese but I was able to add English subtitles.

I met this guy a few months earlier, walking in pain and limping near my house. He had been stabbed with a knife in his torso and in his eye, and lost his vision. I prayed for him, and most of the pain left, but his eye was still not seeing the first time I prayed.

This month a new Christian at our men’s group received deliverance, and I went to deliver a Bible to him the next day. I don’t know if it was a word of knowledge or just me wanting to pray for someone, but as I came back I felt I should go in the opposite direction where some people were instead of turning to go home. I met the same guy I had prayed for months before, but in a very different neighborhood where he was now living. God touched him and his wife, the rest of the pain left, and his vision returned in the eye that had been stabbed! He told me that he couldn’t see anything before that, but when he looked with his other eye he saw a double image!

This man at the recovery house had a painful hernia. When I first prayed for him, he felt all the pain leave. The area got hot and he felt something moving and pulling inside his body. The hernia seemed smaller but was still there. For two weeks after that, he only felt a little pain once in a while, but not like before. Then I visited and prayed again. This time he felt heat and the hernia completely disappeared so he could no longer find it! He recorded his testimony four days later when I visited with the Mova-se missions group!

Much more happened as well. A couple from my city was traveling in the south of Brazil and asked for prayer for a friend who had multiple health issues. They were in the car together when I called to pray for her, and the reception dropped in the middle of the call. But I found out later that even the guy who was driving felt his whole body catch on fire with God’s glory, his wife also felt God’s power on her hands, and the lady felt power going through her. She had been losing her vision, but it was completely restored. She hadn’t even told us about a recent surgery on her ankle, but after we prayed she found that the full range of motion was restored! She’d had the surgery only about a week before, and the doctors expected it to take months of physical therapy for her to be able to move her ankle normally again!

Yesterday’s Bread isn’t Enough!

Soon after these wild miracles and many other healings and manifestations of the Holy Spirit, I had the day off of work and went to and pray for a guy who had graduated from the recovery program and recently gotten married. He’d suddenly gotten a rare infection and gone paralyzed. The movement in one leg eventually came back, but the other was still paralyzed. Because of that, he was also unable to work, so I used some donations to bring a bunch of rice, beans, chicken, and other food staples for the family.

Someone contacted me to see if I could pray for a certain young lady who had cancer all through her body and it wasn’t responding to chemotherapy. So I agreed to go there first. This was right in the wake of some amazing miracles of cancer healed. Just the month before I’d heard the report of a lady who had 8 tumors and they were all gone when she got tested the week after we prayed for her. The young lady’s body was swollen and bruised. There was a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. I saw a vision of the girl who invited me laying her hand on the belly, and the young lady felt heat coming from the girl’s hand. Still, there was no overwhelming manifestation like I’d seen so many times in the previous weeks of the person’s whole body getting hot. She still felt where the tumors were. Of course, we stand in faith. I told the family about the blind eye opening and the hernia disappearing the second time we prayed, and encouraged them with other testimonies. But I really felt my need for the Lord! There was a struggle in my heart. As wonderful as the previous testimonies were, I needed fresh bread today!

The Lord’s prayer says “Give us this day our daily bread,” and Jesus spoke of healing as the children’s bread. The manna in the Old Testament was only good for that day! Even with all the Lord has done in the past, today is a new day, and I need God’s help today! It’s like that song, “I need you more…more than yesterday. I need you more…more than words can say.”

Actually, in the middle of writing this post, I just listened to this song and started sobbing. Some people might think of this topic of brokenness as heavy. Really, having your heart in that place of weeping before the Lord is like heaven on earth! There is nothing heavy about being broken before the Lord, although there is sometimes suffering on the way to getting to that place!

Brokenness isn’t always about going through hard external circumstances. I recently read the “Panoramic Seer” by Dr. James Maloney. Lately, I’ve watched a few videos of him ministering as well. He sees what the Lord is doing and it releases God’s power for miracles. I often experience the same, but not usually with the detail and abundance of that he does! He also has multiple testimonies of body parts being restored. Anyways, he talked about brokenness in one chapter of his book. He wrote of brokenness in the context of spending time quietly in the Lord’s presence and waiting on the Lord. In my experience, that is part of the value of fasting. We cultivate and rest our hearts in dependence on Jesus! It’s hard to just wait on God! It takes humility.

God’s Promises Leading Us To Brokenness

I’ve experienced more of the overwhelming release of God’s Spirit through my life in the last few years than ever before, and you guys have been reading just the highlights of what the Lord is doing. I feel like these many miracles and signs have much to do with a deep brokenness and cry that was formed in my heart through God’s promises.

What do I mean? I am speaking of both prophetic words over my life, many that I received when I was a teenager, and promises of scripture. Scripture opens our eyes to what is possible for us in Christ and prophecy from the Lord plants something in our heart. God is a God of the impossible and He is glorified by doing through us that which is humanly impossible. God’s promise to Abraham seemed impossible, and there was quite a long waiting period. I believe it produced brokenness in him, but it was a brokenness that kept growing stronger in faith because even as it seemed more and more impossible, he turned in trust to the Lord. Joseph’s promise also took decades to be fulfilled, and much of the time the circumstances seemed exactly the opposite.

What kinds of promises? They include promises of scripture related to faith and ministering healing and deliverance. When you don’t see happen what you know scripture says is God’s will, you can either harden your heart or let this produce a brokenness in you that says “Holy Spirit, I need you! What am I missing?” They also include personal promises and dreams confirmed by prophecy, related to taking the gospel to the unreached and rescuing children. The seed of promises that I have not yet seen fulfilled has produced a brokenness in my heart that says “Help Holy Spirit!” Knowing your need for the Lord is humility, and God gives grace, meaning power, to the humble.

Even my past experiences of seeing what the Lord has done, and other people’s testimonies, create a brokenness in me for the current situation. I’ve seen the Lord totally remove the cancer from people’s bodies. It’s not all right for that to be just a memory from the past! We need the Lord to renew His works today and for the situation in front of us now! And how can I read testimonies of revival from the past and be content without that in my time, where I live, now?

God’s Love Producing Brokenness

Musclebuilders become strong by pushing their limits until their muscles literally tear. But they grow back stronger. In the same way, God’s promises challenge us like a heavy weight that we can’t lift, because they are just too impossible for us to fulfill by ourselves. We need the Holy Spirit! And like a musclebuilder grows stronger by tearing his muscles, we grow strong in the Lord as we fail in our own strength and learn to totally rely on the Holy Spirit. The promise creates a cry which creates brokenness which allows God’s power to flow.

God’s love for others also produces brokenness. Have you ever wept because you just needed to see God’s deliverance in someone’s life? God’s power is released to save and rescue people when our hearts are broken for them. Jesus was broken for love and God’s power flowed unto salvation!

I may have recently seen many wonderful works of the Holy Spirit, but it is often easy for a shell to start to form on my heart if I get weighed down with the cares of life. This is hard to explain or describe, but I can feel it and it hinders the flow of God’s power. That was what I was dealing with that day when I went to pray for the lady with cancer and the guy with paralysis. It’s important to cultivate communion with the Lord and not let a hard shell form that hinders the flow of heaven’s rivers through our lives.

In the testimonies above about the blind eye being opened and the hernia healed, both people were touched by the Lord the first time I prayed. But there was something that happened before the first time and the second time, so that there was an overwhelming release of God’s spirit the second time that opened the blind eye and made the hernia totally disappear. What was it? I knew what God could do, and although I was thankful that most of the pain left, I wasn’t satisfied with only halfway! I knew God wanted to do more! That created a brokenness and a cry in my heart to the Lord concerning the situation. And I prayed again!

I recently watched this very special meeting with Jesus Encounter Ministries in Birmingham and I saw how the Holy Spirit was breaking people’s hearts. I believe you’ll be blessed by watching it!

The post Brokenness and Walking in God’s Glory appeared first on Go to Heaven Now!.

How I Became A Missionary And Heaven Now Missions Began

I’ve recently published the Heaven Now Missions page on the gotoheavennow.com website. People have started to send some donations over the last few years to help with mission projects, and I’ve decided I should organize this better so as to show exactly how donations are being used. A charitable organization in the United States recently partnered with me so that donors in the United States can receive a tax receipt. If you have sent a donation before, I want to make you aware of the new ways to donate through Joshua’s Army in case you’re based in the United States and would like a tax receipt. You can find the information here.

Recent Testimonies

I’ve seen Jesus do many mighty works with dozens of people healed in the last month. After I received a word of knowledge for the manager of a pizza restaurant, she insisted that everyone who worked at the restaurant receive prayer. Everyone who had pain was healed and four people testified that they were seeing perfectly without glasses. Someone has received deliverance every week after the Wednesday night meeting. The first one was at a barbecue. I prayed for him and he fell so hard on the ground that I had to grab him and keep his head from hitting the concrete! I didn’t know he was going to fall! He later told me his back was sore for two days but it was good to be free! Multiple people who had severe pain from cancer got completely pain-free and couldn’t find pain even when pressing on the area. One was a stranger in the park. Another stranger at the park received healing for her eyes so she could both read her cell phone and a sign in the distance that she was unable to read before without glasses. A guy received prayer for pain in his back on Saturday and not only did the pain leave, but he could no longer find the steel in his back! A lady found that not only was her back healed, but she had her senses of taste and smell for the first time in 2 years since she had covid! A young missionary lady also told us how her mother was healed of cancer. Some months before she asked us to pray for her mother, who had multiple cancerous nodules. A week later she went with her mom to get tested and her heart started beating really quickly. The tests for her mom came back negative!

I spoke on a Friday night and Saturday night at the church in Brasilia that had invited me to teach a conference last November. I had really liked this church and didn’t feel notice any of the manipulation or control that so often bother me. They had experienced many miracles since I was last there. A pastor sent a prayer cloth to the hospital with a lady who was going to the church and was a nurse. She put it under the mattress of a patient who was expected to die from cancer. The patient kept getting better and better until they did tests again and found no cancer!

At the Friday night meeting, the pastor who took the offering before I spoke said “We don’t teach tithing here. We teach giving out of thanksgiving.” On Saturday, I was talking to the lead pastor who was very excited about a mission trip to a poor region of the Northeast. I will go with him if possible. He said “I don’t even want to hear the word “tithe!” They are also supporting the local rescue mission. Many churches that teach tithing do not have the same concern for the poor.

It was really encouraging to spend some time with a group that shares my values and priorities. Healing and deliverance and caring for the poor. Giving as the outflow of having received blessing in Christ, and not as the means of attaining it! I felt quite at home there. On Saturday night we prayed for everyone who had glasses. Several people were seeing much better and even perfectly without glasses! I recorded some testimonies and I added English subtitles to one of the videos so you can see it here. You can see how I was having people praying for each other and this lady was now able to read the clock at the back of the building. For some reason, the English subtitles don’t show when I embed the video on my site, so you can watch it on YouTube if you want to see the English subtitles.

Since new readers are unfamiliar with my story, today I’ll share how I became an out-of-the-box missionary! Maybe it will encourage someone else whose heart God has lit on fire for missions!

How God Lit a Passion for Missions in My Heart

I became convinced of God’s existence through a miraculous healing when my mom prayed for me. Soon after, I went to a Christian camp called Circle K and prayed the salvation prayer. My camp counselor was a guy named Mike Measley, and he was a missionary to tribes in Papua New Guinea. I decided I wanted to be a missionary too. I was 9 or 10 years old.

I vacillated about what I wanted to be when I grew up, but then I had a supernatural experience with God’s love when I was 13 and went on my first mission trip to Mexico just after turning 14. I fell in love with the people and with the lifestyle that was completely centered on Jesus and His kingdom. We went with YWAM. I decided once and for all that I wanted to be a missionary. That was all I wanted to do with my life, and it has never changed since.

I was constantly looking at YWAM literature and magazines and reading books about missions. Our church was also a missions-sending church, and one of the highlights of the year was our missions conference. I would weep and pray for the nations and talk to the missionaries. I was one of the first to arrive and the last to leave!

I started studying Spanish intensively. I got the worst grades in Spanish, but it was my favorite subject. However, I got involved in bilingual churches and bought a bilingual Bible. I was starting to preach in Spanish by the time I was 17. I went to Poland when I was 15, fell in love with the people, and started studying Polish for three hours a day.

I had completed almost all the requirements to graduate high school by the end of 11th grade, and I felt that the Lord was telling me to graduate early and work so I could go on mission trips. It wasn’t what my parents were planning on at first, but I talked to them and they agreed. I started working as a roofer and taking off for missions whenever I could, at least once a year and sometimes more. Mexico, Belize, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, and more. I was reading in Russian on my second day there and had read the book of 1st John by the end of the 2-week trip. By the time I go married, I had been to a dozen countries, could get by reading my Bible in a dozen languages, and had preached in four languages.

Don’t Go Until You See Jesus!

When I was 17 or 18, Dale Mast came to our church and gave me a prophetic word. It was “Don’t go until you see Jesus!” The word frustrated me. All I wanted was to go. And although I was going on short-term missions and I believed the Lord was leading me, I wasn’t going like I wanted to go.

But I came to understand that word with time. Even though I would cry when I thought of sharing the gospel with people, I lacked boldness and was terrible at articulating the gospel message. Jesus told His disciples not to go until they received power! And that was after he had already given them power and authority and sent them to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons.

I received God’s correction at a Global Awakening conference when I was 20 years old (I think) and began to see Jesus do miracles I had only imagined. I read the gospels and cried, thinking “How was I so blind? I read this before but I never saw that Jesus healed them all because he was moved with compassion.” I felt that even though I loved Jesus and had an assurance of my salvation before, I had barely even known who Jesus was until now! I saw Jesus. I saw His love and glory through the manifestation of His power. Even though I never had a vision, this impacted me as if I’d had a vision of Jesus glorified. I saw HIm with the eyes of my heart.

This produced incredible boldness and it became easy to clearly articulate the gospel message.

How I Ended Up Outside The Camp

Jesus suffered outside the camp, and many Christian leaders and pioneers throughout history have at some time found themselves outside the camp of the religious establishment.

I was going on mission trips and preaching trips and growing, and every year I would also take off of work to go to the Voice of the Apostles and other Global Awakening events. I usually slept in the back of my truck because hotels were expensive! I slept on the floor of the airport in London on my way to Russia! I would do whatever it took. I just wanted to go!

I often struggled mentally over if I should go to the Global Awakening supernatural school, or to a YWAM discipleship training school. They were great options for many people, but I always felt like the Lord wasn’t leading me to that. (I still have a high level of appreciation for both organizations.) I felt like joining those programs would take me away from the missions the Lord was sending me on, and I didn’t have the peace to go. I was already going with signs and wonders. I wanted to take what I’d experienced at Global Awakening to others, speaking other languages.

The manifestation of God’s glory in my life got really strong during and after my second trip to Russia. But as I returned, I faced a very difficult situation that made me realize I’d been taught to relate to God through my tithe instead of through Jesus’ redemptive work. I went on the third trip to Russia in spite of very difficult circumstances, but the trip was confirmed supernaturally in several ways including a love for the people that came on me which I felt physically as a current of power flowing through my whole body from head to foot. I would be with a group of people in Russia and receive multiple words of knowledge, at times speaking out almost all the conditions and needs for healing in the room!

After returning, something clicked as I read the book of Galatians and I became convinced that the tithe issue of today was the same as the circumcision issue Galatians referred to. It wasn’t just wrong-It was a deadly error that was causing great harm to the church. The blessing or curse could only hinge on the tithe if we were justified by tithing! I had a talk with my pastors and shared multiple problems I saw. Most points weren’t answered but our pastor said they could no longer support me.

That was so hard! I’d had favor with the pastors before. I dreamed of being among the missionaries sent out by our church. My mind had told me I should do a DTS to become a missionary and be sponsored by the church, but I never had the peace of conviction that God was calling me to that. And now how would I ever receive approval? It would have been so much easier to just agree about tithing. But my conscience could never allow it!

The pastor said I would ruin my ministry. I thought “He doesn’t understand. Does he think ministry is a profession for me? Being a missionary is my life! I can’t do anything else anymore!” There had been multiple times when God’s love filled me until I was weeping loudly as I prayed for nations, and dozens of times when I felt God’s glory physically and tangibly. God’s love for people had grabbed a hold of my soul and there was no turning back, no other option. Even if I thought about or tried to do something else, I could never stay focused on it. But now I was outside the camp. I could not violate my conscience to save “my ministry.” Really, I don’t have a ministry. I just get the privilege of participating in Jesus’ ministry.

I got married in 2011 and moved to Brazil in 2012 in spite of many contrary circumstances not being able to work for the first few years. I felt even more isolated, far from my Christian friends and connections in the US, with no recognition or support as a missionary except for the encouragement of my immediate family and the pastors of a house church I’d been involved in. I passed through some really dark times and periods when I was bitter. But the Holy Spirit lifted me and established me even more in truth. I gained an aggressive faith during that time. Even in the hard times, I still prayed and saw miracles, mostly outside the church. I soon became involved in a precious Baptist church in Rio de Janeiro, but was still very much outside the camp of most of the religious establishment.

I am a Missionary!

I published my first book and started blogging in late 2015. God’s power would come on me as I wrote and the healings and miracles were increasing again. 2016 through 2019 were some of the hardest years in terms of natural circumstances, but I was becoming really strong inside and seeing an increase in miracles. My wife was kidnapped yet escaped. Our car was nearly totaled twice due to highway robbers, and we faced many other hardships.

In 2017 we rescued an elderly man, Edgar, who was being attacked in his house and tortured with knives for money. We lived in a lawless place. The police didn’t help and the guy we rescued him from threatened to kidnap our daughter. At times I felt I didn’t know if I would live or die, but I determined “As long as I live, I’ll live for Jesus.” We brought Edgar to live with us. Soon after, he stopped walking and we had to change his diapers and care for him for the last months of his life. I vomited because of the smell sometimes, but I had great joy because Jesus said that what we do for the least of these, we do for Him. I shared the need on Facebook and friends donated to help us buy diapers, food, and other necessities for Edgar.

I also taught a weekly Bible study in a group across the street for a year, and it was a joy to express the love God had planted in my heart! They said, “You talk about Jesus like you really know him!” I received a word of knowledge for healing for every new person that visited the Bible study that year, and they were all healed!

Things I bought for Edgar with donations.

I visited the US that year and asked the pastor to agree to disagree about tithing but to pray for us as missionaries. I tried to tell him I was sharing the gospel and seeing Jesus do miracles on the street but we were facing a lot of danger and hardships and needed prayer. Much more than a tithe, I was risking my life for Jesus by taking in Edgar. But it was to no avail. They did not want the church to partner in any way with someone who didn’t believe in tithing, even if it was only prayer.

That was when I started telling people I was a missionary. I figured that nobody could say I wasn’t a missionary anymore because I was living in Brazil, preaching the gospel in Portuguese, and doing the work of a missionary. What really matter was that Jesus had sent me….and I knew it! The identity came with the call, not with the approval of the religious establishment. I was also ordained in 2017, not into a denomination but by a local pastor who recognized God’s grace and call on my life.

How The Work In Brazil Grew

In 2019 we received a prophecy that we would move to the central region of Brazil. We hadn’t even imagined this, but two weeks later a company in Goiania offered my wife a job and paid for our move and our apartment for the first few months. It was a big change and an escape from a terribly difficult time in Rio de Janeiro. I became more and more aggressive about doing the work Jesus had called me to. Too much time had already passed and I wasn’t going to wait for things to work out. I was going to find those who would receive Jesus.

I got involved in a local missions group and on the first trip to a poor neighborhood with wooden shacks and dirt streets, I saw every single person I prayed for get free from pain. It was about half of the adults present in the neighborhood. Since then I have taken every opportunity I could to see the mighty works of Jesus and become even more involved in a second missions group. I pray for people everywhere and see healing miracles, salvation, and deliverance. I don’t wait for people to give me opportunities. I find them! This led to the work supporting local rescue missions.

I have also preached at several churches in the last few years, teaching the people to minister in God’s power, and I’ve seen many miracles in that context. I have a few good pastor friends in various parts of Brazil. When I say I’m mostly outside of the religious establishment, I don’t mean out of fellowship! I have fellowship with those who are willing! Still, with the exception of the trip once in a while to preach in another part of Brazil, the deliverance, preaching, healings, and signs and wonders are almost all outside of the camp. Yet people on the other side of the world write me and tell me how the books, blog posts, and testimonies have encouraged them!

My life doesn’t quite look like I had imagined, but I am so thankful for what Jesus is doing and I know that there is much more ahead! I’m even grateful for the hard times. They helped to create an aggressive attitude that has formed the habit of praying for people everywhere.

The post How I Became A Missionary And Heaven Now Missions Began appeared first on Go to Heaven Now!.

How Heaven Now Missions Began

Dinner at the House of Mercy  House Of Mercy Armavir

I first put this page up when we were caring for Edgar, an 83-year-old man we took in. His story touched many people, and some friends helped us with donations for his needs. You can see the story further below.

Helping people in need is an expression of love and worship to God. Edgar is no longer with us, yet I like having this page as an opportunity for people to participate in something that’s dear to God’s heart. I decided to share the needs of my friends in Armavir, Russia, who are doing a tremendous work to help other people like Edgar.

My friends Tanya and Volodya Magaras are running a House of Mercy in Armavir, Russia. They are feeding people in the park and taking in men who have nowhere to go. The community works together, raising animals and tending gardens. What they’re doing is so beautiful that it makes me want to cry. I love Russia and Russian people dearly, and seeing the people at the House of Mercy gives me so much joy!

Vasya

Their newest inhabitant (as of the time of this writing) is Vasya. The House of Mercy got a call from a Cafe near the highway. Vasya came to them asking for help. He was hospitalized with a serious head injury and operated on. He has some memory loss. Since he didn’t have his documents, they soon took him out of the hospital and left him by the road. He now lives at the House of Mercy. The house is stuffed full of people, and there are still so many more who need help! They would like to expand and be able to care for more people.

You can find the House of Mercy here on Facebook. Although the posts are in Russian, you can see some pictures and videos. You can also donate directly to the House of Mercy through Paypal.

Caring For Edgar (How This Page Started)Me with my son Edgar

Yeah, I’m the younger guy in the picture above! In Brazil, “my son” and “my daughter” are affectionate terms by which people sometimes call even their own parents. My wife tells me that I have two babies now, since we’ve started taking care of Edgar.

I’ve had a strong desire to take care of street children for many years, and prophetic words have confirmed it. I’ve also received prophetic words about bringing food to hungry people in Brazil. I don’t know how some of that will happen, but I feel like taking care of Edgar is training for me in some way. My father-in-law and I are now caring for Edgar 7 days a week, changing his diaper, moving him, and bathing him twice a day. I’ve been a mostly self-supported missionary for many years now, and my wife and I both work to meet our family’s needs.

We were using Edgar’s money from the government (About $260 USD equivalent per month) to pay for most of his needs, and we were paying for his only his food and water from our own pockets. However, his expenses increased when he lost mobility. We also had to buy a cheap toilet-seat wheelchair to bathe him and move him from one place to another. Last week when I went to buy diapers for him, his money had run out. My mother-in-law gave me some of her money to pay for the diapers. You can read more of Edgar’s story below.

Things I just bought for Edgar with donations. Thanks to those who are helping!

I’ve decided to invite the body of Christ to share in this ministry. We’re taking care of Edgar by feeding him, bathing him and changing his diapers. We’re extending the opportunity to you to contribute by helping us to buy his food, diapers, and other care items which his small income doesn’t completely cover. We also need a cheap regular wheelchair (slightly over $100) so we can take him to get his money from the government. A few people have already donated to us (unsolicited), and it has encouraged us tremendously.

Thank you to all who helped us with Edgar’s needs. It was a tremendous encouragement. Right now, our friends in Russia are in need of help more than we are. They have a “House of Mercy” and are taking in homeless people in Armavir, Russia. You can donate directly to them through this link.

Edgar’s Story

Edgar used to live about a block away from us, and we sometimes stopped in to check on him. He doesn’t have any children or close family members to help him. He has been friends with my in-laws for a long time.

Edgar broke down crying in front of our house last year, and we found out he was being attacked by bandits at night. They cut his arms with a big knife and were trying to get money from him. I wrote about this situation in a few blog posts, including I Will Sing Your Praise Before The “Gods”, and Divine Protection Part 3.

The police didn’t help us, and we ended up moving him into a small house on our property. This house had been abandoned, filled with rat poop and trash, when I moved to Brazil. I had cleaned it out and partially remodeled it, replacing the electric wiring and repairing the walls. We gave this house to Edgar, and he used his money to finish the repairs. The bandits got mad and one of them threatened to kidnap our little girl, but things settled down. I ended up praying for him and blessing him! (That story’s in Jesus In Me Can Love People When I Can’t.)

Edgar got worms in his feet last October when I was in the United States, so my wife had to pick them out. We hired a lady to come for about an hour a day to take care of his feet, and paid her out of the money Edgar gets from the government. Edgar receives the equivalent of about $260 a month from the government. (As of the Jan. 30, 2017 exchange rate.) We’re continuing to pay her to come and help us care for Edgar’s needs, as well as paying someone to clean his house.

On January 4th, my father in law came running up to my house and yelling for me to help him. Edgar was naked on the floor in his house, moaning unintelligibly. Poop was smeared all over the house. I forced a window open so I could reach in and unlock the door, and we picked Edgar up and gave him some water. He could no longer walk or lift a cup to his mouth to drink water.

The next day we finally got an ambulance to come, only because we had a special connection with a police officer and asked him to help us. However, the ambulance crew refused to take him to the hospital. People tell us the hospitals in Rio de Janeiro aren’t accepting anybody over 70 years old. Edgar is 83. We had taken Edgar to the emergency room once before, and they sent him back in an ambulance. They didn’t send an ambulance to get him, but used an ambulance to get him out of the hospital! That’s the state of the public health system in Brazil.

Edgar’s condition has improved so that he can support a lot of his own weight when I stand him up, drink water by himself, and help to clean himself. It was really tough lifting him by myself when he was like a big rag doll. I’m glad he’s better! However, we still need to bathe him, change his diaper, and help him to eat. He’s currently unable to get the food up to his mouth with a spoon by himself.

He was falling out of his bed and getting hurt, so we put his mattress on the floor. His bed was missing one foot and the corner was resting on bricks. I was going to buy some wood to re-build his bed and add supports to the sides so he wouldn’t fall out. But thank God, a friend from the Baptist church obtained an old hospital bed for him. It weighs a ton, but we can crank it to lift the head of the feet, and it prevents him from falling.

Edgar’s new bed. Both sides have a fence to keep him from falling, but one side is removed in the picture.

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Don’t Cancel God’s Promises For Yourself!

The Abundance Of God’s Riches In Christ!

Romans 8:32 (NIV) He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

I can testify that there is a life in which the promises of Romans 8:32 becomes our experience. We receive the riches of heaven, not based on our own merit or godliness, but because of God’s goodness. We receive the inheritance through faith…the same inheritance promised to Jesus! We are co-heirs with Jesus (Romans 8:17), given the same glory (John 17:22), and seated with him in heavenly places! (Ephesians 2:6)

Yet this is not the experience of most Christians in the institutional church. That includes pastors and leaders. Recently, a young guy who has understood the message I’m sharing prayed for a guy in our men’s group. He had been taking medication for HIV. He got tested again. Negative!

A young pastor heard this testimony and was amazed. He said, “Wow, God can do anything!” But to him, it was mysterious. I think he thought God just sovereignly decided “I’m going to show my power this time.” He didn’t get it. He doesn’t realize how we see such things happening constantly. Healing of cancer, broken bones, deaf ears. Signs and wonders. A few weeks ago I was talking about the abundance of grace in Christ and a guy ran up in the middle and asked me to pray for him. He said “I don’t know who this guy is but I never heard anybody talk like this and I saw flames and smoke coming out of his body as he talked! Now I know that I need to convert to evangelicalism!” (We explained that it’s not about joining a group but it is about knowing Jesus.) God confirms the simple, pure gospel message with signs and wonders

The young pastor doesn’t understand that we have different results because we have a different message. It contrasts with what he believes. Even though we fail often and have lots of room to grow, our lives are like this. It’s normal. We are receiving heaven’s abundance.

On Tuesday I went to the Casa de Paz recovery house. A 19-year-old guy asked for prayer. After participating in an armed robbery, he got in the middle of a shoot-out with the police and was shot in the hip. His heart stopped for 4 minutes in the hospital but he came-to again. Now he was in pain and limping. The hip injury had caused secondary injuries in the ligament in his lower leg and his foot.

Almost immediately as we started praying, he felt a wind blow on his leg and his foot went numb. It had not been numb before. It was numb for 7 minutes and the pain was gone. We experience such things regularly. On Thursday I went to another mission called “Metamorphosis.” There were about a hundred people there, and I lost count of how many were set free from pain. We are expecting to receive more reports later as what God has done becomes evident. I had a word for healing of incontinence before I went. They have many elderly people.

Two of the women had severe pain and could not walk without assistance. One had strong pain in her knees even when she was sitting because an infection had gone to her bone marrow. The pain left instantly. She was still afraid to get up and walk. I said “Jesus did his part. It doesn’t hurt. Now you do your part and walk.” Encouraged, she got up and walked without pain. What happened with the other lady was very similar. (For the sake of clarity, both still needed some improvement with their walking, but they were walking with no pain, and the pain had been intense just moments before! We look not at what is seen but at what is unseen, thanking God and standing for the rest.)

Another lady had a cyst causing intense pain that often made her dizzy. I asked for a volunteer and one of the other ladies put her hand where the cyst was. We prayed and the pain was gone in a moment. Those are just the highlights because everything that happened in the last week was too much to keep track of or to even know yet. The mighty works of Jesus are overwhelming.

We speak of healing miracles because it is easy to talk about in concrete terms in order to help people understand the abundance we are speaking of. Yet there is so much more to spiritual riches than even just that. I recently spent some a few hours with a guy who is immersed in the religious system. He was so burnt out and depressed. It was a big contrast with the joy the gospel produces. He was encouraged after spending a few hours with me. Spiritual riches manifest in joy, patience, perseverance, inner strength, and all the fruit of the Spirit.

Two Prophetic Questions God Is Asking To Challenge The Church

This life of spiritual abundance was so foreign to that young pastor because he, and the system he is in, are preaching a different message. Those who believe that message cancel God’s promises for themselves and nullify faith.

I encourage you to write down and memorize this verse. It’s gold!

Romans 4:14 For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless.

Some leaders want miracles and the manifestation of God’s glory, but they don’t want the message that produces this. They want to continue telling people to get more of God’s blessing by putting more money into the offering. Some want miracles so they can draw more people to their church and grow their ministry, but not because they love the people and just want to see Jesus. This may work for a while, but it’s not sustainable.

You can start in the spirit and end in the flesh, as the Galatians did. You can have miracles, healing, and revelation to an extent with a mixed message. But the movement that has a mixed message will lose the glory, will often be ineffective at equipping the saints in the works of ministry, and will fall into the works of the flesh.

Two questions from heaven are burning in my heart. I feel God’s power on the words and I know He is asking these questions to challenge those who have been nullifying God’s promises for themselves.

Jesus broke the devil’s power by his death. He was cursed by hanging on a tree so that we could receive the blessing. WHAT CURSE IS JESUS’ DEATH INSUFFICIENT TO BREAK?

Jesus’ resurrection raised us up into heavenly places far above all power and authority, with full access to the Father and everything we need for life and godliness in the knowledge of him. If God didn’t withold his own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how much more will He not with us also give us all things? WHAT BLESSING IS JESUS’ RESURRECTION INSUFFICIENT TO BRING US INTO?

Selah. (Pause and think about that)

If you try to obtain the promise by your works rather than through Jesus’ works, you nullify faith and cancel God’s promises for yourself. You dishonor Jesus Christ, his death, and his resurrection, and you disqualify yourself from receiving that which Jesus’ redemptive work has accomplished.

The way this most often happens in the churches I see around me is that leaders take an offering every week promising that people will get more of God’s blessing by what they put in the offering.

The secret to spiritual abundance is to reap according to the Seed that God sowed! Jesus died, was planted in the ground as a seed, and rose up again in three days. Your seed is puny compared to the Seed that God sowed! If you understand what Jesus did for you and how rich you are in him, you’ll never be focused inward, every week trying to gain more blessing by putting more in the offering. You’ll be focused outward, giving heaven’s riches to the world.

Many Christians think “Jonathan, you can’t be right! You are going against what everyone is saying!” I respond “If you are happy with the religious status quo, then keep on thinking the same way and doing the same thing.”

Many pastors get terribly upset with me for my stance, but I don’t see the spiritual abundance in their lives that I am experiencing. I don’t see the joy and peace that I know manifesting in their lives. I don’t see what they preach producing the results that the message I believe produces. They want to be seen as leaders and “spiritual fathers” but I don’t see anything in their lives that makes me say “I want that!”

Rather, I often see contention and selfish ambition. I see people who are constantly struggling, easily depressed, prone to anger, living a double life, and falling into the works of the flesh. That’s what their message produces.

What Does The Message You Believe Produce?

Living by a message based on Jesus’ redemptive work produces the fruit of the Spirit. Living by a message based on your works produces the fruit of the flesh.

If you are trying to be more blessed or escape a curse by what you put in the offering, you have annulled God’s promises for yourself! This is why many Christians sitting in churches are living in spiritual poverty.

Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith you cannot please God. Romans 4:14 says faith is canceled if those who depend on the law are heirs. Those who are trying to get more blessed by what they put in the offering or by other works are living a life in which they can never please God. Do you go to a church that receives the offering every week by telling you it’s the means by which you can get your breakthrough or blessing? I am sure that the fruit of the flesh abounds there.

Living a life in which you can never please God is the source of insecurity, control, selfish ambition, outbursts of anger, and other works of the flesh. I’ve seen what is inside coming out of pastors in that system. Cursing, profanity, rage, threats, lies. Sadly, it’s so normal to them that they think “everyone loses their temper.” They will never convince me that I can get more of God’s blessing by putting money into their offering.

If you’re living a life of pleasing God, receiving God’s grace by faith, those things aren’t even inside of you to come out. Not even when you’re under pressure. That anger is the fruit of living a life of spiritual poverty and never being able to please God because you have made faith out to be nothing and have annulled God’s promises for you.

No, I’m not against giving! I’m against the way it’s being taught that destroys faith and robs God’s people of heavenly riches! Giving in the Spirit has the same motivation as ministering healing. We don’t do it to gain God’s favor. We do it to express his love.

I previously wrote an article explaining that scripture often uses the term “the flesh” to talk about living under the law and by your own ability rather than by God’s grace. Paul said that the law produced every kind of sinful desire in him. A common incorrect assumption is that scripture uses “the flesh” to talk about the condition of being prone to failure because we are in human bodies. Paul himself said in Romans 8:6 that we are not in the flesh if we belong to Christ. This statement challenges every Christian who thinks “the flesh” refers to a sinful state that makes Christians keep failing. Obviously, Paul was not saying we are no longer in our human bodies!

If you are trying to obtain the inheritance by your works rather than by Jesus’ work, you are living in the flesh. If you are trying to obtain the blessing of Abraham by what you put in the offering, you’ve canceled the promise and annulled faith. You are living in the flesh.

You can pray in the flesh or pray in the Spirit. Praying in the flesh is based on your works. It manifests in fruitlessness and spiritual poverty. Praying in the Spirit is based on Jesus’ work. It leads to abundance. The results of spiritual abundance or spiritual poverty reveal whether you are living by God’s grace or by your own religious effort.

Galatians chapter 5 tells us the fruit of the flesh and of the Spirit. The context in the chapter is clearly of living by God’s grace and not by the works of the law. Many pastors disagree with me about every blessing you need being found in Christ, not obtained by the money you put in the offering. But what I see in their religious system is the fruit of the flesh, not the fruit of the Spirit. I see them biting and devouring each other. Their systems are full of selfish ambition and envy. They often run like a mafia and lie to cover up the deeds of darkness.

Galatians 5:15-26 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

My Response to Local Pastors Who Tell Me Their Financial Blessing Validates Their Teachings About Receiving God’s Blessing Through Tithes and Offerings

I visit people’s houses and go to recovery houses. I see the needs. I’ve found people who didn’t even have flip-flops. Most of the local churches are neglecting the needy, the orphan, and the widow. Your claims of blessing mean nothing to me if you aren’t caring for the needy in your own city. I also haven’t seen the miracles in your church services that I see among needy people outside of the church. They don’t give me anything, but I give to them. They are surely receiving according to what Jesus Christ has done and not according to what they put in the offering plate. And I sometimes see more miracles among them in a day than I could see sitting in many churches for a year.

When I moved to the state of Goias there was one person I knew in this state who challenged my faith. I only knew one person here whose life I looked at and said “I want to imitate that. I want to learn from what I see.”

He was kicked out by the religious system a few months after I met him. He now lives in another part of Brazil. He has opened multiple institutions rescuing Brazilian children from prostitution and abuse. Most of the religious institutions don’t show any care at all about this situation in their own country. The church that kicked him out recently spent 20 million reais making their building more impressive to show their status. A large church can easily give more in one night to a famous powerless orator who shouts empty words than they do all year to rescue the children and homeless in their own country.

Mammon isn’t even true wealth. How much money and how many followers you have means nothing to me if I don’t see spiritual riches and if you can’t make Jesus’ priorities your own by caring for the people in your own city! Why don’t you come to Jesus, learn from him, and stop defending the religious status quo? Do you want revival? You can have it! But revival doesn’t come without repentance. If you aren’t experiencing God’s promises fulfilled, maybe it is because you are annulling them by trying to obtain the inheritance through the law! If you really want to experience something new then you must stop doing the same old things that everyone else is doing! If you want to live something new, you’re going to have to start thinking differently!

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