Meeting Transcripts

Followers First

“And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost” (1 Thessalonians 1:6)

“For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 2:14).  

Introduction

The church at Thessalonica was born out of adversity. In fact, churches are usually born out of adverse and contrary circumstances. That is where easy conversions come from. In Acts 17 we read of Paul’s visit to Thessalonica after he left Philippi. We know what experience he had there in the jailhouse. From Philippi, he went to Thessalonica and Greece and preached for three Sabbath days. Some believed, many did not; some of the “baser sort” (Acts 17:5), we are told, caused great persecution and problems for the church. They assaulted the house of Jason and that led to Paul being sent away by night. However, during that period of time a church sprang up, and he was now writing to these individuals who still found themselves in great persecution and adversity. That is what the verse which I read stated. They became followers of them and of the Lord, having received the Word in much affliction. If you read the whole text you will get an even greater sense that they were under great persecution.

Thessalonica Followed Paul

We find that they became followers. In March, we talked a bit about the fact that God selected you as leaders, because you first learned to be followers. That is the way it works. They were not afraid to follow Paul. 1 Thessalonians 1:5 says, “For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake.” They had learned to know Paul, and as a result they were willing to follow him and his example as he followed Christ. God calls us to follow men. This flies in the face of the mentality that says, “I am not going to follow men; I am going to follow God.” If we want to follow God, we had better read the Bible that teaches us to follow men.

Paul Followed God

I will read the first four verses of 1 Thessalonians 2 and you will notice again some of what they were encountering. “For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance in unto you, that it was not in vain: but even after that we had suffered before, and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile; but as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.” Paul was the focus of accusations. That is why he said his exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. The accusations were that he was deceitful, that he had impure intentions, and that he had resorted to guile or trickery. People tried to undermine his credibility. However, he was not concerned with pleasing men but rather with pleasing God.

We Have a Commission

Paul said in verse 4, “We were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel.” We have been put in trust with the Gospel and with the Apostolic Faith Gospel. We want to carry it on, and that, I am persuaded, is our assignment. We have received something of great value. We are to hold to it and pass it along to the next generation who, we trust, will hold to it as well.

Attempts to discredit our church and our heritage are Satan’s attempts to get us to depart from our heritage. Be wise when somebody tells you what the church supposedly did, or what somebody in the church did. Though I do not have an elevated view of holy Christians, I do have an elevated view of what God has done with human beings in this wonderful work. Some get blinded by human imperfections and cannot see what God has preserved for nearly one hundred years. We have been entrusted with something precious and by the grace of God we are going to carry it on. So be wise to Satan’s attempts to undermine our unity.

The enemy embitters some along the way. He always has and always will. This often causes individuals to cast doubt, sow discord, etc. The sun does not rise and set on all that, and these are peripheral circumstances that the enemy uses. We need to remain focused on the mandate and commission from Heaven, and keep on the path that God has set us on.

Do not assume that we are stuck with something that we do not like in any aspect of our work. Christians have always been treated as archaic or out-of-step. However, being in step with Christ always will mean being out of step with the world. So if you are ridiculed or doubted for holding to something antiquated, do not be apologetic for it. We should not be apologetic for anything that we hold to in the Apostolic Faith Church, not one thing. I think we are right on track. I think we have been right on track, and I think we are going right on track. We need to be persuaded of that.

A Guardrail

The question arises, “What do I tell those who question our no jewelry policy?” You know what I recommend? Tell them the truth. Tell them that in our work we have a policy that requests that participants not wear jewelry. That is it. “What do I tell someone who asks why?” Tell them the truth. Tell them that the Bible instructs us to hold fast to what we have received. We have been entrusted with a faith of holiness teachings. The Bible tells us to embrace what has been delivered to us, to hold it, to teach it, to preserve it, and to pass it along to the next generation. That is it! The answer should be short.

Someone might say that it is a manmade rule. So is starting every Sunday morning service at eleven o’clock. Most people come by eleven; some people never make it by eleven. Why? Some people will not follow man. But those who do show up by eleven get the benefit of a beautiful prelude. Those who do not lose out! Some say, “I don’t want to do it just because the church said to do it.” Why not? The blessing is to follow what has been established. If you need justification to do it, do it for that reason. We showed up for dinner at the right time every night growing up because we knew that dinner was going to be there. We wanted it. If we showed up late, we did not get it.

An honest inquirer came to me and said, “If there is a big piece of lumber in the middle of the highway and people keep tripping on it, or there is continually an accident as a result of it, why doesn’t somebody get out and move the lumber?” The person was referring to the jewelry issue. So I listened and thought that it was a good analogy. But when the story was over I said, “Well, there is just one problem. You view the no jewelry policy as a piece of lumber in the middle of the highway. I view it as a guardrail alongside the highway.” It really does not matter how I view the issue or how you view it, we have a Bible mandate to pass along what we have received. So it is not about me, or you; it is about what God says. We are thankful for the guardrail of holiness teachings that we have been entrusted to preserve.

We Want to Inspire

When I read old camp meeting teachings, I feel that we want the same thing today as they wanted back then. We may have to approach things differently than back then, I am told. I have read some of those teachings from the seventies, and I enjoyed them. I enjoyed every part of them. I enjoyed reading how they addressed standards issues publicly. They did that probably more so than we do today. It appears that the appropriate way to get the desired results fifty years ago was to demand or even police. In our culture, it seems that the appropriate way is to try to inspire, to try to elicit a response from the heart. However, make no mistake, we want the same thing. I do not appreciate those who diminish what was taught fifty years ago, or the way it was done then. It was a different culture fifty years ago, so we should not pull something out of the context of time and use it now to undermine the integrity of our beautiful heritage.

We want to inspire people! We do not want people watching garbage on television or reading books that they ought not to read. We do not want people dressing like the world. We want the same thing and we want the same results. The teachings were right then, and they were pure, and they still are. We thank God that you will see a platform full of quality young people, when they perform their concert on Saturday night. I see this generation no differently than I saw those young people in the mid-seventies when I came along. Some respond, and some do not. Some seem to be mature and they develop and grasp the way of holiness, others do not. The ministers in those days hoped for the best, and some of us stuck. It seems like some in every generation embrace it—not nearly as many as we want, but we are guided by our mandate from Heaven, not by the response we get.

Guided by God’s Word

People in our day like to do surveys. In sales, they hold focus groups to find out what appeals to people. Some have taken that approach into the church to find out what church goers want, and the leadership adapts according to what they learn the people will respond to. The Bible has a different way of describing this. It says that in the last days they will “heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears” 2 Timothy 4:3). The people, the audience, want their ears to be tickled. The audience wants to drive the presentation, drive the message. When we become audience driven, we are no longer Holy Ghost driven. We are not insensitive to what people will respond to, but we will not compromise our message when people do not respond in an overwhelmingly positive manner. In fact, the complaint in many denominations is that the church has forsaken its senior saints by replacing old hymns with pop-beat stuff, which ultimately appeals to the flesh. We do not want to over generalize, but we can observe from other denominations that are not even holiness organizations what the result of doing that is. Their gray-haired people who paved the way for their work are forsaken. We are not going that way. If we needed counsel on how to do things, and if we were to have a focus group, we would check with the gray-haired people, not with the ones who have an earring in their nose and lip and everywhere else.

We are clearly guided by God’s Word. We read again in 1 Corinthians 16:13, “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith.” Over and over again, read the Epistle with that thought in mind and see how God will guide you. If every church, even those that are not holiness churches, had adhered to what their founding people preached at the beginning, would they be better off today or would they be worse off today? The ones that were doctrinally off base to begin with are still doctrinally off base, and not one of them has improved their mode of presentation.

Sold Out

We are sold out to this Gospel. I think that there are about fifty people in here. If fifty of us are sold out to the Apostolic Faith Gospel, and really believe in it and are committed to it, then the members of our churches will find it easier to be sold out. We have to be sold out to combat the subtle tactics of Satan, who continually tries to make inroads into our organization. He wants people to get discouraged when somebody gets self-focused and blames the church. However, that really does not impact where we are going. It really does not. We are on track and we need to feel like we are, and to pray that we are. We are not perfect—we can look for plenty of improvements along the way, and God will surely bring us up as we go. However, one thing is for sure, our core message is on track. God is going to bless us as we endeavor to again hold one more camp meeting, if the Lord tarries. Let’s pray that God will help us to do the work of an evangelist. Those of us who have the opportunity to preach, somehow we must pray that God’s anointing will be upon what we say. We must pray that His Spirit will be upon the musicians who render their pieces, and that His Spirit will be in our meetings. We want people to be inspired to pray and to pray now. We want people to feel the urgency of the hour; that this is their moment of opportunity that will pass and may never reappear. Let’s pray that God will help that pulse to go forth and that we will have a great time in the Lord.