Prayer for a new Church for a new season

God's plans for the faithful remnant.

The Lord said to me, “Faithless Israel is more righteous than unfaithful Judah. Go, proclaim this message towards the North: ‘Return, faithless Israel’ declares the Lord, ‘I will frown on you no longer, for I am merciful,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will not be angry for ever. Only acknowledge your guilt – you have rebelled against the Lord your God, you have scattered your favours to foreign gods under every spreading tree, and have not obeyed me, declares the Lord.’” (Jeremiah 3:11-13)

This pronouncement is said to have been given to Jeremiah “During the reign of King Josiah” (Jer 3:6) which makes it one of the earliest words given to the Prophet, as Josiah died in 608 BC when Jeremiah was still a young man, probably in his 20s.

If we compare this word to that given in the year 587 BC, more than 20 years after Josiah’s death, we find Jeremiah still talking about a promise of restoration to Israel, the Northern Kingdom. That promise was given when Jeremiah was being held in the gatehouse of the guard (Jer 33:14) just before the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar’s army, which reveals the life-time commitment of Jeremiah to the message of restoration and to unity between the two houses of Israel, North and South.

Calling Back the Remnant

This message is all the more remarkable when we remember that Jeremiah never knew the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which had been destroyed by the Assyrians about one hundred years before he began his ministry.

The city of Samaria had been destroyed and the whole Northern Kingdom of Israel overrun by the Assyrians who carried out ethnic cleansing, deporting whole communities and resettling them in different parts of the Assyrian Empire, while replacing the Israelites with people from Babylon and other parts of their Empire (2 Kings 17:24). Historically this began the formation of the mixed-race people known as the Samaritans, who were still around at the time of Jesus.

Jeremiah had a life-time commitment to the message of restoration for both houses of Israel, North and South.

Jeremiah firmly believed that it was God’s purpose at the end of a period of exile to bring together the remnants of both peoples, those of Israel and those of Judah, who were scattered around the old Assyrian and Babylonian empires. They would be brought back to the land originally promised to their forefathers, but there would no longer be any tribal differences: they would be one people in a covenant relationship with God who declared “I will be their God and they will be my people” (Jer 31:33).

Message of Hope

This word from the Lord pronounced by Jeremiah must have come as a wonderful message of love and mercy from God to the remnant of Israel still in the land. They must have felt lost and abandoned after the disaster that had befallen Samaria and the whole Northern Kingdom. It appeared that God had deserted them and that there was no hope of redemption from the yoke of Assyria. But this beautiful word of hope from Jeremiah would have brought them great joy.

A similar word was given in Babylon to the remnant of Judah, to whom Isaiah was sent by God with a message of restoration: “‘For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger, I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,’ says the Lord your Redeemer” (Isa 54:7-8).

This is similar to the promise given in Isaiah 49:15: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will never forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hand.”

The promise of restoration given to Jeremiah was conditional upon the response of the faithful remnant. He was told to go and proclaim the message towards the North: “Return, faithless people, for I am your husband. I will choose you – one from a town and two from a clan – and bring you to Zion. Then I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding” (Jer 3:14-15).

The promise of restoration given to Jeremiah was conditional upon the response of the faithful remnant.

Preserving a Remnant

This promise is of great significance for us today. When a nation comes under judgment or grave misfortune that has been brought upon them by their own foolishness or falling away from the truth, everyone suffers – the righteous and the unrighteous, the guilty and the faithful. But God recognises that there is always a faithful remnant, even in times of judgment and national catastrophe.

They are the ones who provide the seed of renewal, the hope for the future – the tiny number of faithful believers who have not surrendered to foreign gods but who have remained faithful to the God of their fathers, the God of the Bible who gave his word of truth to Moses.

This promise says that God would summon “one from a town and two from a clan”: these precious individuals who had remained faithful to God, he intended to bring together into a new relationship with himself (the fulfilment of the New Covenant given first as a promise to the house of Israel and the house of Judah in Jeremiah 31 and opened to Gentiles through Jesus).

This faithful remnant would be used by God for the salvation and restoration of the whole nation – for a fresh outpouring of his cleansing, refreshing and empowering Holy Spirit that would bring resurrection life to the nation.

Sowing Life

While these promises were originally given to Israel and Judah, we can learn important principles from them that apply to us today. God loves to use small numbers for carrying out his purposes as he used Gideon’s 300 to save the whole nation. In the same way, God preserves a small number in every generation who remain faithful through the darkest days.

At the right time he turns to them and uses them as the seedbed for sowing life into the soil of the land; as the kindle for lighting the fires of revival that spread across the countryside from village to village and town to town, until all the people lift up their heads again and come to Zion, to the God of Creation, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

He is the One who has given the true faith for all time: who so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever shall believe in him will have eternal life.

This article is part of a series. Click here to read other instalments.

Times of refreshment: a look at historic revivals in Britain.

David Noakes continues his commentary on the state of the charismatic movement.

Having considered how counterfeit spiritual activity has infiltrated the church, David now turns to the dangers of false doctrine, before applying these insights to the Kansas City Prophets.

Warnings of False Doctrine

Jesus, Paul and John have all warned us concerning the dangers of counterfeit spiritual activity. There is also, however, a second major aspect of deception about which the Scriptures warn, and it is that of false doctrine.

Paul speaks about it numerous times in his letters, for example in 2 Corinthians 11:1-4, in Galatians 1:6-9 and in Colossians 2:8-23. He warns in 1 Timothy 4:1 that “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars...”.

Let us be clear about what Paul is saying: it is a warning principally for the closing days of the age - 'later times'. It is a warning that Christians will fall away: you cannot abandon a faith unless you have first been a party to it. The false teachings will not be man-made, but demonically-inspired by deceiving spirits, and they will come through people who are hypocrites and liars; like the 'savage wolves' of Acts 20:29-30, they will be falsely motivated so as to draw people away from the truth in order to obtain a following for themselves.

It is of vital importance in these days that we are alert to the dangers of false teaching. Those of us who teach must be diligent to declare the whole counsel of God; it was only on that basis that Paul was able to declare himself innocent of the blood of all who had heard him (Acts 20:26-27) and he was warning the elders of the church at Ephesus to be equally diligent.

It is of vital importance in these days that we are alert to the dangers of false teaching.

All believers should cultivate the habit of the 'noble Bereans' (Acts 17:11), who did not accept even the teaching of Paul as being true until they had examined it in the light of the scriptures. How we in the church need in these days to re-examine our diet of the seemingly-endless flow of books and magazines, and to ensure that above all we are fully acquainted and familiar with the whole of the Bible. Only by knowing what is in God's word can we walk in safety. 

A Time Will Come…

Paul's chief warning concerning false doctrine is found in 2 Timothy 4:1-4. He has just encouraged Timothy at the end of chapter 3 concerning the importance of holding fast to Scripture, underlining that “all Scripture is God-breathed...so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (vv16-17, emphasis added). We need to note that there are those in leadership in the Church of God in these days who do not believe in the inspiration of Scripture; if they thus declare the word of God to be untrue concerning itself, we must then question the validity of whatever else such men may say.

In chapter 4, Paul urges Timothy to preach the Word “with great patience and careful instruction” (v2), particularly in the light of the fact that “the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (vv3-4). 

I believe we are now living in such days. A factor which has lately become of particular concern is the coming together of the two major facets of deception - counterfeit spiritual activity and false doctrine - in such a way as to support and reinforce one another. This brings great danger to the Body of Christ, particularly as many believers now have only a very limited knowledge of what is contained in the Bible.

In Deuteronomy 13:1-5, the warning of Moses to the people of Israel is that they may encounter a prophet who predicts signs and wonders which do in fact come to pass but that this in itself is not sufficient to validate him as a true man of God; for if he then teaches them falsely so as to lead them astray, he is to be regarded as a false prophet.

Biblically, therefore, the acid test of the genuineness of a man's ministry lies not in signs and wonders, nor even in accurate predictions, but in his faithfulness to the Lord in declaring doctrine which is in accordance with God's word.

How we in the church need in these days to re-examine our diet of books and magazines, and to ensure that above all we are fully acquainted with the Bible.

The Kansas City Prophets

In recent years, this biblical principle of giving pre-eminence to the revealed word of God has been turned upside down. In 1990 came the experience of the ‘Kansas City Prophets’.

These men were brought to the charismatic church in Britain that year on a wave of publicity concerning their outstanding prophetic ministry, and particularly of a specific predictive prophecy that a great revival would break out in this country in October 1990. It did not, to the dismay and embarrassment of many church leaders who had publicly endorsed this ministry, and to the great disappointment of thousands of believers who had believed that their longings for revival were about to be realised and that they would see dramatic events.

This sort of happening is dishonouring to the name of the Lord, bringing his Church into ridicule in the eyes of those who had been exposed to the extensive publicity, particularly in the mass media. It also undermines the belief that the Holy Spirit does bring genuine prophecy to the Church for our up-building and enlightenment.

Furthermore, the shock and disappointment has damaging and far-reaching effects. For many years God's people in the charismatic churches have been given by their leaders specific words of prophecy and much teaching of a prophetic nature which has been triumphalist in flavour, encouraging expectations of mighty visitations of God, of great numerical increase, and of the Church enjoying an experience of exercising power and authority in the world, equipped with unparalleled supernatural spiritual power.

This kind of teaching has been entirely at odds with the biblical picture of a suffering servant Church displaying the humility of her Master, preaching the Gospel in the last days under increasing pressure and persecution. It brings with it a particular danger from which we are now, I believe, beginning to reap harmful results.

Triumphalist teaching and words of prophecy is entirely at odds with the biblical picture of a suffering servant Church.

Where leaders have continued to promise great things to the people and those promises have gone unfulfilled, the leaders come under an increasing sense of pressure to deliver the goods which have been promised; and the people's experience of disappointment, of hope continually deferred, leads to disillusionment. 

The scene is thus set for the entry of deception, because both leaders and people become desperate at the failed predictions and dashed hopes, and both are increasingly likely to grasp at any straw which appears at last to bring fulfilment.

In such circumstances the counterfeit can all too easily succeed, because the need for something, anything, to fill the gap overrides the Godly caution which should test and discern the source of what is being offered, before it is accepted as genuine.

Triumphalist Teaching

The doctrine brought by the Kansas City Prophets was very much in line with the triumphalism of Restorationist teaching and expectations. The teaching was based upon specific prophecies which have been reproduced in articles 15-19 in this series. It was that God was raising up in the Church an ‘end-time breed of dread warriors', before whose power and authority nothing would be able to stand. They would be an all-conquering army; and the scriptural basis for that teaching was taken from Joel 2:2-11.

To base such a doctrine on that passage of Scripture, however, is entirely fallacious. Arising immediately from the preceding description of the effects of a great plague of locusts, the passage describes an all-consuming army invading the Land of Israel, and taken in its context of “the day of the Lord” (vv1-2, 11), it is speaking prophetically of an invading army sent by God to execute his final judgment against Judah and Jerusalem at the end of the age. Certainly its fulfilment is yet in the future, at the time of Jacob's tribulation (Jer 30); but it does not refer to the Church.

Nowhere in Scripture does God call his Church to be an invading army to execute judgment. Nor does it speak of a worldwide domination; the specific geographical setting is the Land of Israel and in particular the City of Zion.

Such teaching, based on a complete distortion of this passage from the word of God, displays the worst sort of error in interpretation. It takes specific predictive prophecy, converts it into an allegory which is not to be found in the text that the invaders represent Christian 'dread warriors' and then bases a doctrine upon that allegorical fancy. It is not merely nonsense, however. It is also dangerous to the Church because of the numbers of leaders who received it with gladness and were willing to let their people believe such teaching.

Where leaders have promised great things to the people and those promises have gone unfulfilled, there is increasing pressure on leaders to deliver the goods – setting the scene for the entry of deception.

Why should such false doctrine be so gladly and easily received? It was received gladly because it reinforced all the false doctrine and false prophecy which had been accepted during the previous 15 years. 

It was also received easily, I believe, for a subtler and deadlier reason, which is to be found in the coming together to reinforce one another of the two main strands of deception - counterfeit spiritual manifestations and false teaching - to which I have already referred. Let us now consider the topic a little further.

Put to the Test

The Kansas City Prophets came to Britain as guests whose ministry was being invited and welcomed by many prominent church leaders in the country. Some of us had been unhappy about this visit, because we were not at ease with their style of ministry or their doctrine, and in particular we had said publicly that we did not believe the specific prophecy concerning the outbreak of revival in October 1990 to have come from the Lord.

During the summer of 1990 there was a preliminary gathering where the ministry of these men was presented to an invited group of national charismatic church leaders. Some remained unhappy and unconvinced, but others were willing at the end to sign a statement approving of the ministry as being valid. In view of the doctrine already mentioned, one might have expected the ministry to be regarded as questionable on those grounds with no further evidence being necessary; but there was a further ingredient involved.

An outstanding and spectacular feature of the ministry lay in the singling out by name from the public platform of individual members of the audience with whom the speaker was apparently not acquainted. Words of knowledge were given concerning those individuals, relating to aspects of their past life and their present circumstances, and usually completed with encouraging prophecy concerning their future. The accuracy of the words of knowledge brought amazement and served to convince many that they should attest the ministry as being from God.

To be convinced on these grounds alone, however, is to make an assumption which can be dangerously misleading. There is, of course, no question but that such words of knowledge could certainly have been given by revelation from the Holy Spirit; but we need to be alert to the fact that this is not the only possibility where supernatural spiritual activity is being manifested. It is essential also to take other factors into account in order to be sure of the source from which the manifestation originates.

One factor, the nature of the doctrine, we have already mentioned; in addition there is the scriptural injunction to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1), and a further matter of vital importance is whether what is happening is consistent with the revelation of Scripture: is it in character for the God of the Bible to be acting in this sort of way? An understanding of the ways of God as revealed in his word is of great importance: according to Psalm 95:10, quoted again in Hebrews 3:10, the hearts of God's people go astray when they do not know his ways.

We charismatic Christians can be terrifyingly gullible when it comes to supernatural spiritual manifestation. We assume that because a thing looks right, it is right. A good counterfeit always looks right unless and until it is put to the test.

We charismatic Christians can be terrifyingly gullible when it comes to supernatural spiritual manifestation.

When a word of knowledge is true, we assume that this means that it must have come from God. That is an assumption which is unsafe to make, and one which the word of God demonstrates to be so. In Acts 16:16-18, we find the following account of the experience of Paul and Silas with a slave girl who had a spirit of divination:

Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved”. She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned round and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.

There was not one false word in the slave girl's statement about Paul and Silas. The spirit of divination was speaking absolute factual truth through her. Yet Paul discerned that the source of her knowledge was false and commanded the evil spirit to leave her.

What a lesson this contains for us in these days. How much we need to be alert and discerning, aware of the subtleties of the Adversary. satan has no objection to presenting us with any amount of factual truth, but always with a false motive. If true statements will cause us to lower our guard and be lulled into a false sense of security, then he will willingly use them to pave the way so that when the lie finally comes we will not detect it.

If, by a spirit of divination, he can give us a number of accurate words of knowledge so as to convince us that God is the source from which this spiritual manifestation is coming, then he will gladly oblige; once we have made the mistaken assumption that all is from God and all is well, we will then without hesitation accept the false teaching which follows.

It is imperative that we learn the ways of God from Scripture. The doctrine of Joel's Army was false and the ministry should have been questioned on those grounds alone. In addition, however, we need to ask the question: 'Would Jesus in person be doing such a thing in such a way?', specifically in this case: 'Would Jesus personally stand on a public platform and dispense words of knowledge for no apparent reason other than to display the fact that he had the ability to do so?'

The answer in light of Scripture would be a resounding NO! Jesus was never willing to perform spiritual signs to order, as a performance for its own sake. He did so when it was necessary for the purpose of exercising the compassion of God towards the needy; the signs confirmed the truth of the word which he spoke and they were certainly indications of his Messiahship, but he chose to communicate his authority through the words which he spoke, not through the signs and wonders.

satan has no objection to presenting us with any amount of factual truth, but with a false motive - to lower our guard so that when the lie finally comes we will not detect it.

Indeed, Jesus often told those whom he healed to keep quiet about it. In these days, however, we are more impressed by the signs than by the truth of the word and it brings us into great danger of deception. 

Believing without question or testing that the source of origin of the signs is genuine, we easily swallow the bait which has masked the hidden hook of false doctrine to bring us into error.

A Vivid Picture

During the summer of 1990, the members of the ministry team of which I was part met together for a day to pray and wait upon the Lord about this perplexing matter of the then-impending visit of the Kansas City Prophets. During that time, I received and shared a vivid mental picture.

I saw first a large, flat, empty expanse of sand on a seashore. The sea was a very long way back down the beach, and scattered about on the sand were a number of large rocks, all of which seemed to be about four to five feet high. Each rock had a flat top on which was a small lighthouse.

The picture then changed. The rocks no longer supported lighthouses but were otherwise unaltered. The sands were covered with many people, enjoying themselves on the beach on a fine warm day. Then, as I watched, there came sweeping in across the sand a sudden very swift flood-tide. Nobody had time to get out of its way, except for some who scrambled onto the tall rocks and stood there, above the level of the water, which seemed to be about three to four feet deep.

There was no panic from those in the water. After momentary surprise, they were splashing around and shouting to those who were up on the rocks: “Come on in, the water's warm and it feels lovely”, but those on the rocks were refusing, saying “we don't trust it”.

Then, as suddenly as the flood-tide had come in, it receded back across the sands and all those in the water were swept out with it. The sands were now empty again except for those standing on the rocks, who I saw had now become the lighthouses which I had first seen.

Asking the Lord what this meant, I received the understanding that the flood-tide signified a coming wave of deception; it was not the first and it would recede, but it would not be the last, and further, more potent waves of deception would come. Those who remained happily in the water were deceived by the fleshly appeal of what was happening to them, and their failure to discern the true nature of it and withdraw would mean that they would be easily swept into the next wave when it came, and further deceived.

Those who stood on the rocks were those who stood on the rock of God's word and distrusted what was suddenly happening, and they would continue to be as lighthouses of warning when further flood-tides came in to try to deceive God's people.

Next week: David offers his testimony of his personal encounter with the Toronto Movement.

This article is part of a series, re-publishing the 1995 book ‘Blessing the Church?’. Click here for previous instalments. References to time spans have been edited where necessary.

The world in the Church.

David Noakes continues his chapter giving a personal and biblical perspective on renewal. First published in 1995. Click here for previous instalments.

We can now see within the Church the equivalent of the world's superstars, the hero on a pedestal supported and followed by his admirers. In some cases, the gifted man in leadership has been exalted in the minds of his followers to a point of infallibility, which brings both him and them into great danger.

Within the last year, a mature Christian man with leadership responsibilities said to me: “David, I simply cannot believe that X [a prominent charismatic leader] could possibly get anything wrong”. I could only respond that in that case, he had effectively elevated the man to the status of God, bringing both of them into great peril. We have brought into being the phenomenon of the Christian guru.

During the last 20 years we have seen emerge another characteristic of the spirit of the age: the desire to create large-scale enterprises, to build church empires. This is the ecclesiastical equivalent of the multi-national conglomerate commercial organisation, ruled through a hierarchical authority structure with exalted executives directing operations and visiting outposts of their empires from their central headquarters. It has much of the world's ways about it, but little of the biblical revelation of the structure of the Church or of the servant-leadership of which Jesus speaks in Matthew 20:25-28 and 23:1-12.

The world's delight in spectacular entertainment has infected the Church with the love of the big show on the public platform. 25 years ago we would see lines of people quietly waiting to receive the laying-on of hands so that the Holy Spirit would show the compassion of God in bringing gifts of healings. Now, however, we have progressed to the point where we expect that in place of the ministry of the word and prayer, men will perform as magicians to cause others to fall to the floor, for no good reason, but simply as a demonstration of power.

This is far removed from the activities of the Jesus revealed in the gospels, who disdained to exercise power for wrong purposes. He was consistently unwilling to perform signs and wonders to impress, but only in order to demonstrate the compassion of his Father to the sick and the needy and as confirmation of the truth of the word which he spoke. Many meetings now, however, are not for the purposes by which he was motivated, but for those of worldly display, financial gain and the elevation of the ministries of men.

The Church today has adopted the world’s delight in superstars, spectacular entertainment and commercial empires.

The materialism of the Western world and its 'get rich quick' philosophy has entered the Church in the form of the prosperity gospel. By 'naming and claiming' we seek to oblige a penny-in-the-slot god to deliver the goods which a hedonistic philosophy desires. Paul would have found it very hard to believe in such teaching in the midst of his impoverishments, imprisonments and shipwrecks! Yet the Church wants to be like the world, luxuriating in a form of self-indulgent religion.

“To the law and to the testimony” cries Isaiah 8:20. What does the word of God say of this? “Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonour the name of my God” (Prov 30:8-9). The Scripture explains clearly the wisdom which underlies the teaching of Jesus that we are to ask simply for our 'daily bread'.

How Has the World Gained Access?

What has made possible this wholesale invasion of the Church by the thinking and the ways of the world? Most of those who have introduced these ways are men who originally started well as ministers of the word. What has ensnared us?

The largest factor leading us to embrace the world and its methods is exactly that which led Abraham into the trap of his liaison with Hagar: the operation of the uncrucified flesh, the inherent drive towards self-gratification rather than to what is pleasing to God. The permanent conflict within us between spirit and flesh, so plainly spelt out in Romans 8 and Galatians 5, always poses one stark question: whose will is going to be carried out, that of God or that of self?

The attributes of the self-centred, self-gratifying flesh will always drive us away from the Lord and into the embrace of the world. As with Abraham and Sarah, the flesh causes us to think that we know best and can manage God's business quite well for him. This pride, however, for that is what it is, opens the way to the desire for wealth, for fame and for the praises of men; and to the urge to exercise within the Church not godly authority, but worldly domination and control over the lives of others.

The attributes of the self-centred, self-gratifying flesh will always drive us away from the Lord and into the embrace of the world.

As a result, leaders unwittingly usurp the place of Jesus as Head of the Body, just as Jezebel usurped the authority of her husband King Ahab. Instead of gifted leaders being used by the Holy Spirit in his primary purpose of building up the Body of Christ, they often became the agents of causing the people of God to become crushed and ineffective under a religious tyranny, unable to grow and mature as the Lord would desire.

A further effect of overbearing leadership, and one which is potentially of immense and far-reaching danger, is that all discernment of the source of spiritual activity becomes the prerogative of leaders and the rest of the people have often no alternative but to stifle the witness of the Holy Spirit within them. We shall return to this topic later.

Doctrinal Error

Pride, and its accompanying desire for power and dominion, all too easily opens the door to false doctrine. Taken together with the vital ingredient of the deep root of anti-Semitism (the largely unadmitted and un-repented sin of the Gentile Church through so many generations), pride has opened the way for the doctrines of Dominion theology and for the false concepts of Restorationism and Reconstructionism.

The rejection of the clear and unambiguous teaching of Scripture concerning the continuing part which the nation of Israel has to play in the purposes of God throws away a vital key to a biblical understanding of the significance of the times in which we live. It leads to error and confusion in eschatology; to deny that God will fulfil all his word concerning Israel in the closing days of this age is to throwaway, as it were, the hub of the eschatological wheel into which all ancillary doctrine fits like spokes.

Discard Israel from the equation and there is no clear understanding of how the rest can fit together. We cannot understand how or when the coming Day of the Lord will affect the Church or the world unless we first understand how that event will affect Judah and Jerusalem.

The concepts of Restorationist thinking can only be sustained alongside a theology which maintains that God has replaced Israel with the Church; and to hold that theological position involves the assertion that God has broken his word of assurance to the Hebrew nation, particularly with regard to their restoration to the land given as an everlasting covenant to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Ps 105:8-11).

The God whom we know as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not, however, one who breaks his word of covenant, for to do so would be to deny his very character. He will undoubtedly fulfil to the uttermost all his word concerning the descendants of Jacob.

Restorationist teaching and the accompanying 'Dominion' or 'Kingdom Now' theology depends, however, upon an interpretation of Scripture which denies that God will fulfil his word concerning Israel. Such an interpretation is utterly false.

To deny that God will fulfil all his word concerning Israel in the closing days of this age is to throwaway the hub of the eschatological wheel into which all ancillary doctrine fits like spokes.

The basic concept of Restorationism stems from an erroneous understanding of Acts 3:21. This verse is interpreted to mean that God will restore the Church to a glorious condition in the world before the return of Christ. However, the same verse goes on to define this restoration as being that which God has promised to do through the Hebrew prophets. Of what, then, did they predict the restoration?

They prophesied concerning the restoration of the Davidic kingdom (Amos 9:11-15) and all that accompanies it, which will be restored by the action of the Messiah at his return. No 'restoration of all things' prior to the Second Advent is predicted by the prophets of Israel.

Why should this error of understanding matter so greatly? Clearly it must matter for the fundamental reason that any distortion or error in interpretation falsifies the word of truth and misleads those who are wrongly taught. In the times into which we have now entered, however, it has an additional peril for those who have been misled by it. False doctrine gives rise to false prophecy, and false prophecy leads to confusion and disillusionment because of the failure of its expected fulfilment.

In that part - and it is a very considerable part - of the charismatically-renewed Church which has espoused Restorationist thinking and Dominion theology, there has been a consistent strain of prophecy predicting glory and dominion, power and rulership for the Church before the return of Christ. Triumphalism has been a dominant feature. It is very appealing; it appealed strongly to me when I was first hearing it more than 20 years ago but its appeal, unfortunately, is to the flesh in us. Who would not prefer to be the head, rather than the tail?

The problem, however, is that neither the basic doctrine nor this prophetic theme are true; they are both deceptive, for neither accords with the revelation of the word of God concerning the last days in which we are now living. These are days, not of increasing light, but of increasingly great spiritual darkness on the nations of the earth (Isa 60:2), which will intensify until he who is the Light of the World returns. Along with this darkness will come the false light of the increasing power and extent of New Age religion, leading ultimately to the worship of Lucifer.

The Dangers of Deception

The greatest peril to the Church, and one which will increase in danger as time progresses, will be that of deception. This is the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament. Satan will assume increasingly his two principal roles (Rev 12:9) of both dragon and serpent, persecutor and deceiver, and he will employ both means in causing many to fall away (Matt 24:9-13).

Any error in doctrine falsifies the word and misleads those who are wrongly taught – it also gives rise to false prophecy, which leads to confusion and disillusionment.

Deception, however, is his preferred method, for by it he can cause men unwittingly to serve his purposes. We are warned in 2 Corinthians 11:14-15 that Satan masquerades as an angel of light, and his ministers as ministers of righteousness.

If the Church is not alert and discerning, we will surely be deceived, for he will prove too subtle for us unless we have open ears to hear and to heed the warnings which the Holy Spirit gives against deception whenever it arises, as more and more frequently it will surely do.

Counterfeit Spiritual Manifestations

Although deception is no new weapon against the Church (much of the writing in the New Testament epistles had the exposure of deception as its purpose) nevertheless of all the signs of the imminence of the Second Coming and the end of the present age, the increase of deception is the sign of which we are given the most consistent warning.

When the disciples asked this very question of Jesus concerning the signs of the end of the age, he began his reply with the words: “Watch out that no-one deceives you” (Matt 24:4). He immediately warns them of the emergence of false Christs (v5) who “will deceive many”, and in verse 11 of false prophets who “will appear and deceive many people”.

There is further warning in verses 23 and 24 concerning the appearance of false Christs and false prophets who “will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect if that were possible.”
Jesus is warning of false men who will seek to validate their deceptive claims by performing great signs and wonders. They will manifest great spiritual power and bring about amazing activity yet nevertheless, they are not sent by God.

Satan is a master of counterfeit spiritual phenomena, as he had demonstrated when Pharaoh's magicians by their occult powers duplicated Moses' action in turning his staff into a snake, and then also duplicated the phenomena of the first two plagues which Moses pronounced upon Egypt (Exod 7:6-8:15). The source of their power was entirely different, but the results appeared identical. It was not until the third plague, of gnats, that God did not permit the magicians to succeed, at which point they recognised and declared to Pharaoh that the plague must be from God; their own source of power was no longer operating.

What a warning we should draw from such an account in Scripture. The outward evidence was identical, but the origin of their power was occult. If we look simply at outward appearances, impressive as they may be, we are candidates for deception. It is for this reason that the New Testament gives us so much clear warning concerning counterfeit spiritual activity.

Our need is not to reject spiritual manifestations, but to become increasingly alert and practised in distinguishing the source of the power behind them (Heb 5:14).

This is not so that we should become afraid of the genuine and reject all spiritual phenomena out of hand; rather the reverse, for the more the deceptions come against us, the more we shall need the genuine powerful activity of the Holy Spirit in order that we may discern and counter it. Our need is not to reject spiritual manifestations, but to become increasingly alert and practised in distinguishing the source of the power behind them (Heb 5:14).

Paul gives clear warning in 2 Thessalonians 2 concerning the coming of the Day of the Lord and the return of Jesus. He declares that first, a figure known as the man of lawlessness (or man of sin, the personification of the spirit of satan, sometimes called the anti-Christ) will appear. This person will be overthrown and destroyed at the return of the Lord Jesus; but before that, warns Paul in verses 9-11, he will display by the activity and power of satan “all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders” and “every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie…”.

How awesome and terrible that last statement is: but for the believer it should be encouragement to hold firmly to the truth of what is revealed to us in the word of God.

A further major warning concerning counterfeit spiritual activity is found in Revelation 13:11-18, describing the second beast of John's vision. The first beast of that chapter corresponds to the man of sin, while the second is the 'false prophet', who is encountered again in Revelation 19:20. His function is to perform miraculous signs by power which counterfeits that of God, so as to deceive the people on earth into worshipping the man of sin. They will be fooled into thinking that he is the true Christ, but he will be the anti- or pseudo-Christ.

Next week: David turns to the issue of false doctrine, which joins counterfeit spiritual manifestations to make up the two major forms of deception.

David Noakes begins his chapter, offering a personal and biblical perspective of renewal.

This article is part of a series, republishing the 1995 classic ‘Blessing the Church?’ (Hill et al). Click here for previous instalments.

The history of Israel tells us that again and again the Hebrew nation, despite the Law, despite the warnings of the prophets, walked in ways of their own choosing and not in the ways of God.

They chose the way of the flesh, the way of self-will and disobedience, in preference to the will of their God; they chose to compromise and to make an accommodation with the spirit of the world in which they lived, to worship not only the God of Israel but also the false gods of the surrounding Gentile nations, and to walk in the ways of the world from which God had called them to be separate.

The final outcome we know: disaster and exile, from which the promised return is only now taking place.

The Church, likewise, in every era of her history has faced the same basic problems and the same moral choice. The pressures and the subtle attractions of the world-system which surrounds God's people confront us daily with the need to distinguish the ways of God from the ways of the world, and to make the choice to walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh; to walk in the will of God to the exclusion of the clamouring demands of the flesh in the form of self-will and self-indulgence.

The climate of the present age in which we live is, however, perhaps, the hardest to withstand which the Church has yet encountered.

The Spirit of the Age

In the society of the Western nations, the spirit of this age is one which seeks and demands the instant and the spectacular. The world's heroes are those who display outward charisma; their often morally bankrupt character is regarded as irrelevant. Instant success in the forum of materialism or of entertainment guarantees a man wealth and the status of a celebrity.

The pressures and the subtle attractions of the world-system which surrounds God's people confront us daily with the need to distinguish the ways of God from the ways of the world.

The achievements of electronic circuitry and other scientific advances have made commonplace instantaneous results in many fields of daily activity, and have brought intolerance of all that depends on plodding, painstaking labour to achieve its results.

In this disposable society, enduring results are not necessary; all is ephemeral. Tomorrow we will throwaway yesterday's wonder and get the new and better one which will by then be being offered.

Such attitudes, and the spiritual atmosphere which they engender, bring only death to the church which begins to accept and to embrace them. No longer is it seen as acceptable that “through faith and patience [we] inherit” the promise of God (Heb 6:12); we must have it all now. No longer is the discipline of waiting upon God and waiting for God regarded as relevant, but instead we want to be like the world. We crave for instant and spectacular results.

The spirit of the age has deluded us into thinking that the Church ought to be experiencing heaven on earth, here and now, forgetting the plain teaching of Scripture that this cannot be until the return of Jesus (1 Pet 1:3-7). We are encouraged to live in expectation that all problems should be speedily swept away, that financial hardship and ill-health should be eliminated; to believe in a magic-carpet type of Christianity in which we may rub the Aladdin's lamp and summon forth the genie who will do all our bidding for our comfort and prosperity, forgetting the teaching of Scripture that “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

As Clifford Hill has stated in previous instalments of this series, it was into an age in which this sort of spirit was coming increasingly to hold sway that the charismatic renewal movement was born in the years leading up to 1960. The fear of the Lord was being replaced by contempt and disregard for the moral law contained in his word, which was coming to be seen as an unnecessary restriction upon a society which had never had it so good.

The spirit of the age has deluded us into thinking that the Church ought to be experiencing heaven on earth, here and now, forgetting the plain teaching of Scripture that this cannot be until the return of Jesus.

The British Charismatic Renewal Movement

The beginning of the charismatic renewal movement in Britain can be dated to the conferences convened by Arthur Willis and David Lillie, the first taking place in 1958.

This new move of the Holy Spirit had the potential to revitalise and revolutionise the Church, bringing about whole-hearted repentance, a return to the ways of God as revealed in his word, and a thoroughgoing and radical revolution in church life bringing back a quality of Christian corporate living scarcely seen since the 1st Century. Or, alternatively, it could fall under the influence of the spirit of the age and the ways of the world in which it found itself.

Sadly, the evidence tells us that the latter tendency has largely prevailed. In few places has the self-sacrificing quality of life of the early Church been re-established, and there has been nothing which could be seen as having the character of revival.

In the Church as a whole, numbers have continued to decline, biblical standards of morality have been abandoned wholesale, and the British nation has turned farther and farther away from God, while the Church has embraced the spirit of the world and has been sapped by it of spiritual vision and vitality.

To watch the unfolding of the history of the charismatic renewal movement has been for me a matter of great personal sadness. Having spent the early years following my conversion under the influence of sound evangelical doctrine, a foundation for which I shall ever be grateful to God, I received the baptism in Holy Spirit in 1967 as a result of a sovereign action of the Lord on a train travelling to Brighton to transact some business!

The charismatic renewal that started in Britain in the 1950s had the potential to revitalise and revolutionise the Church.

Following this unlikely-seeming event, I was introduced to the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit, all of which I believe wholeheartedly are not only valid today, but will become of increasing importance to the Church in the days which are to come: days not of comfort, but of pressure; not of dominion, but of conflict and persecution; not of ease, but of the refiner's fire; days of turmoil and upheaval when God will be shaking all that can be shaken, both among the nations of the world and also in the professing Church. 

Days of Preparation

Believing this to be so, I perceive the times in which we are living as being, for the Church, days of preparation. I have come to understand God's purposes in renewing the activity of the Holy Spirit among us as being to strengthen the Church for the days to come, re-establishing our foundations upon Scripture, teaching us again how to live corporately as the early Church did, renewing the closeness and intimacy of our relationship with himself, and empowering us to be fearless and unshakeable witnesses to the truth of his word.

Possibly the most important single purpose of God in this visitation of his Spirit was to renew our understanding, and hence our outworking, of the corporate life of the Body of Christ. The Church has for generations been crippled in her functioning by our Western-style individualistic way of life, which has been such a feature of Protestant Christianity.

Vital though the Reformation was, it brought with it also this disadvantage: rooted in the Renaissance, with its rediscovery of Greek classical thought, philosophy and literature, the Reformation brought into the Protestant Reformed churches a Hellenistic view of life which is profoundly different at many points from that of the Hebrew.

To the Hebrew minds of those who formed the early Church, corporateness was instinctive; it was a concept built from the very beginning into the structure of the Hebrew nation descended from Jacob. Hence to them, the concept of the Church as a corporate entity presented no great problem of adjustment in their thinking; it was easy for them to understand its structure in the light of concepts such as that of the Body of Christ, or the corporate Temple made of living stones. They were able to understand their oneness in Christ in a way which the Greek-thinking mind does not easily grasp.

I believe we need urgently to let God renew our Western way of thinking in this whole matter, for it is only in the context of the commitment to one another which is established by a corporate understanding of the Church as the Body of the Lord Jesus that we shall be able to stand firm and glorify him when the days of testing are upon us.

God's purpose in renewing the activity of the Holy Spirit among us has been to strengthen the Church for the days to come.

It is significant that the chief purposes of the five-fold ministry appointments of Ephesians 4, and of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit specified in 1 Corinthians 12-14, are to build up the corporate Body of Christ in such a way as to bring strength and unity and to equip us as members of that Body to be able to carry out the purposes of Jesus, the Head.

By the late 1990s, more than 35 years after those earliest beginnings of the charismatic renewal movement, this had really not happened. There were a few notable exceptions, but most of the Church had made little or no progress towards the corporate unity in Christ which brings forth the quality of Body-life of which we read in the early chapters of the book of Acts.

Ishmael or Isaac

In the mid-1970s, during a time of heart-searching and of questioning over the developments of the newly-introduced doctrines of discipling and shepherding, which had operated to destroy a beautiful work which God had been doing among a group of deeply-committed Christians, I sought God for enlightenment and found that I was being drawn in the scriptures to the account in Genesis of the activity of Abraham in bringing forth first Ishmael and then Isaac.

I began to realise that embedded in that story was a great spiritual principle. Both Ishmael and Isaac were born as a result of Abraham's faith in believing God's promise that from his offspring would come blessing to the nations of the earth. The initiative in the whole matter came from God; of that there was no doubt. Abraham's response was one of faith. Yet the end result brought not only fulfilment and joy; but also tragedy and sorrow, heartbreak and strife, and an enmity which continues to cause conflict in the Middle East to this very day between the descendants of Ishmael and those of Isaac.

Why did this mixed result emerge from Abraham's belief in a promise of God which was intended only for blessing and not for evil? The reason lies in Abraham's failure to understand that the Lord who had made the promise had also already chosen the method of its outworking.

When we receive revelation from God of his intentions and purposes, there are two possible ways of responding: the way of the flesh, which seeks to work out God's purpose as quickly as possible in the ways of human wisdom and ability, or the way of the spirit, which hears from God but then waits for him to reveal further his chosen time and means of fulfilling his intentions.

Abraham, then, was faced with the option of these two different types of response to the revelation of God's purpose. God was going to do what he had said, and he was going to do it in his own time and in his own way; but how was Abraham going to co-operate? Would he “by faith and patience inherit the promise”? Would he display the maturity which he later showed when he was willing to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah, believing that God would still fulfil his word even if humanly that had been made impossible? Would he be willing to wait in faith for a further 14 years until God's appointed time for the birth of Isaac, the promised heir?

Abraham did not wait. How much strife and suffering could have been avoided if only he had! Instead, he and Sarah applied their human wisdom and understanding and decided how, since Sarah was barren, they could accomplish the purposes of God and bring his promise to fruition. They decided how best to help God out in the doing of his own work.

When we receive revelation from God of his intentions and purposes, there are two possible ways of responding: the way of the flesh, or the way of the spirit.

In spiritual terms, they were deciding how the flesh could achieve the Spirit's work. But this is by definition impossible: nothing which is of the flesh, of man's self-will, can ever please God or accomplish his will. What Abraham and Sarah were planning was an unholy mixture of the revealed will of God with the activities of the flesh in seeking to bring the revelation into being.

At Sarah's suggestion, Abraham acted on human initiative and sought, successfully, to produce offspring from the body of Hagar, Sarah's maidservant. This offspring was, of course, Ishmael, who was to be the root from which sprang the Arab nations; but he was not the heir whom God had promised.

Hagar was Egyptian. We must not miss the significance of this, for in Scripture Egypt is a type of the world-system out of which the Christian has been saved. Abraham, acting in the flesh, had employed the ways which the world could offer in seeking to carry out God's purpose but it was to no avail. Ishmael was not the fulfilment of God's promise. When the fulfilment, Isaac, was manifested 14 years later, he would come as the result of a miraculous sovereign work of the Spirit of God. God would not use the methods of either fleshly wisdom and endeavour, nor would the ways of the world be involved in any way. It is always so with God.

He would visit Abraham and Sarah in their extreme old age and by the power of his Spirit, having waited until humanly it was beyond possibility, he would bring forth Isaac from their marital union.

A Parallel in Today’s Church

From this account, contained in Genesis 15-18 and 21, I began to understand that God was speaking of a parallel which was and is taking place within the charismatic renewal movement.

Ishmael stands for that which men's wisdom and activity can bring forth in the flesh by way of fulfilling God's purpose. Isaac, however, represents the true fulfilment of the Lord's revealed intentions, a work which his Spirit alone can accomplish, for which men must wait for God to act at his own time and in his own way.

The principle embodied in the account of how first Abraham produced Ishmael and then God brought forth Isaac remains true today. God asks us to cooperate with him in the outworking of his purpose through our exercise of faith, patience and humble obedience, refusing to fall into the trap of supplementing or even replacing God's work by our own human efforts.

The alternative course is that of human endeavour, prompted by a degree of awareness of what it is that God purposes to do, but with insufficient knowledge of his chosen method and too much haste to await his further revelation.

The first way of responding brings blessing and life.

The second has within it from the beginning the seeds of its own demise because that which is born of human striving and wisdom is of no value in accomplishing the purposes of God. To seek to organise God's work for him leads eventually to failure, disillusionment and confusion, and finally even to deception and error.

God asks us to co-operate with him in the outworking of his purposes – not to supplement or even replace his work by our own human efforts.

I believe that since the 1970s, God has been indicating that within the charismatically-renewed churches we have in various different ways been producing Ishmael and not Isaac. God gave in the late 1950s to David Lillie and Arthur Wallis a vision of how the fresh visitation of the Holy Spirit was intended to bring about a return of the Church to a structure and a way of life which we find revealed in the pages of the New Testament, particularly in the books of Acts and Ephesians.

It was of a corporate body of God's people functioning together in such a way that through them, by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit, would be brought glory to God in the Church (Eph 3:21) and a revelation to the world of the true character of the Lord Jesus; a body of people separated as the early Church was, neither relying upon the world nor compromising with its ways. That was the vision which was communicated to the key leaders who attended those early conferences.

Sadly, what we now see is so far from the purity of vision as to be almost unrecognisable, and the reason is that the ways of the world have infiltrated deeply into the charismatic renewal movement. We have been invaded in a variety of ways by the spirit of the age in which we live.

Next week: How the world has infiltrated the Church.

Paul Luckraft reviews 'Into The Land' by Mike Dwight (2016, RoperPenberthy)

This is another challenging and forthright book by Mike Dwight who draws once again on his extensive personal experience in the mission field and leadership training ministry. As in his first book, Out of the Desert (reviewed here), he combines this practical knowledge with insights into God's character and purposes as revealed in Scripture.

Previously Dwight explained how the desert can be regarded as training ground and a place where it is possible to have a fresh encounter with God. Now he emphasises that the desert cannot be a permanent residence. There must be a moment when the decision is taken to go 'into the land'.

The key questions will always be, 'Will we recognise such moments?' and 'Are we ready?'

God's Time vs Our Time

Dwight provides an excellent appraisal of the two different Greek words for 'time', chronos and kairos. We tend to be followers of chronos - watchers of the clock, counters of days, hours and minutes.

But this can make us oblivious to God's kairos moments, to the immediate 'now' opportunities that are on God's heart.

Dwight emphasises that the desert, though a training ground, cannot be a permanent residence. We must at some point 'go into the land'.

Regarding time from God's perspective rather than ours will make us more in sync with him. Kairos is that 'time' when God advances his purposes, when he moves. We need to be more aware of this than of any human time or timetable. These are moments when it is essential to heed God's commands and directives immediately, whether it is convenient or not.

God's Complete Renewal

We often talk of God doing 'a new thing' or of God's 'new day', but Dwight wants us to understand that 'new' can mean two different things: new in quality (kainos) - in contrast with the old - and new in time (neos) - that which is more recent. He asserts that "The God who loves to do new things will combine both of these" (p79). As such we should be looking for a complete newness or renewal rather than just the next thing on a list. He gives plenty of scriptural examples to back this up.

Dwight's main argument throughout is that God must change us before he can use us, though we might prefer this not to be so! To be ready to enter the land requires us to take a good look at our spiritual lives. Dwight has not been afraid to do this for himself and he is willing to share what he has learnt, especially from his personal trials when starting out as a missionary.

We need to be more aware of God's timing than any human timetable.

Being prepared to present ourselves to God regularly (in fact whenever he requires it) is a pre-requisite of entering the land. It is essential if we are to re-align our heart to his and serve him effectively within a spiritually dark and threatening environment. As Dwight states, "The temptation to breeze in and out of God's presence with little sense of His majesty is very much part of our microwave society" (p65), but we must do better than this.

Defining the Walk of Faith

How are our lives defined - desert wandering or entering new land? We settle too easily, seeking the comfortable middle ground rather than "living on the edge of impossibility" (p29). This is not just for the eccentric few. It should be normal Christianity, as defined by a walk of faith. But in addition to this challenge, Dwight reflects on those central qualities of God which make all this possible – his grace and mercy. If we sense God is moving, and if we desire to go with him, then we need these more than anything else. But they are readily available.

Dwight declares "I have been in awe of Moses and his leadership" (p98). That much is very clear in this book! For some time, God had been challenging Dwight to focus on Moses and Israel's preparation to leave the desert and enter into the land of Canaan. His book looks at the challenges and lessons of this journey. Its aim is both to encourage and sharpen us as we prepare for the coming of God's new day. We may have been in the desert a long time but we can leave it behind.

If we sense God moving and desire to go with him, we need his grace and mercy more than anything else.

This relatively short book has a potential impact far greater than its length might suggest. It can be read in a single sitting but will also reward being dipped into again and again in order to keep its message fresh and its readers ready for moving on. To this end, the book concludes with a useful recap in the form of bullet points to help us with the question 'What do we do, then?' One of the strengths of this book is that we are left in no doubt about this.

'Into the Land' (100 pages) is available from the publisher for £6.99 + P&P.