Meeting Transcripts

Opening Remarks

Welcome and agenda

Thank you very much for coming this morning. It is really nice to meet here before the beginning of camp meeting. Our schedule for this morning is first to eat, then to have a ten-minute activity, and then a fifteen-minute devotional. We expect to be done by 11 o’clock. We will dismiss a table at a time. Remember to take your plates with you to the buffet. With that let’s open with prayer.

Activity

In a moment, you will receive a piece of paper that looks like this. Everyone will get one. Try to find as many of the books of the Bible within this text as you can. The text itself gives the instructions. After ten minutes, we will stop and then find out which table found the most books. There will be a prize.

Each table needs to choose a person to accumulate the information that you put together and count how many books of the Bible you find. There are thirty books to be found within the text. You may start as soon as you receive the handout.

Let’s count how many books of the Bible you found. Alright, we need one person from each table to tell us how many they have. The winning table is table number three with twenty-seven. We will pass out the key to the game, so you will have the solutions to take with you if you wish. Could everyone with their backs to me please adjust their chairs? Then we will get started with the devotional.

Endure Hardness as a Good Soldier

“Thou therefore, endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Timothy 2:3).

Introduction

I have referred a few times in the past to the fact that in my early days of preaching, Brother Nolan Roby did not give me a great deal of notice before I was to preach. It was a hard thing, because typically it was more than thirty minutes, but not often more than ninety minutes. I would get home from work shortly after five (I worked nearby). I would immediately shave, and Debbie would have dinner ready. I would eat and then hope against hope that the phone would not ring. Once in a while it did.

Actually, I never viewed that as a difficulty, because Brother Nolan probably gave me more notice than Brother Normal Allen gave him. And, I have heard of some others in the Medford church who were mentored by Brother Clarence Frost and received even less notice. At times, people were dispatched from Portland to Medford to serve under Brother Frost. The list included Brothers Audrey Wallace, George Hughes, and Roy Frymire. I think that Brothers John Friesen and Marty Girard served there for a time as well. Anyway, with each new generation we ran the risk of producing a softer minister.

The text tells us to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. The Greek word kakopatheho that is translated here as “to endure hardness,” is only used four times in the New Testament. Three of those times occur in the book of 2 Timothy. It is not always translated the same. We can define the word by the three different ways that it is translated in 2 Timothy. In the initial verse, in verse 3, it means “endure hardness.” In the same chapter later on, it is translated as “suffer trouble.” Then later in 2 Timothy it is translated as “endure afflictions.” The fourth time it occurs is in James where it is translated as “afflicted.” So this Greek word means to “endure hardness, suffer trouble, or endure afflictions.” I will briefly look at each of these three translations so that we can get a sense of what Paul was conveying to Timothy, and of what is conveyed to us as well. 

Endure Hardness

We are told to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. This is a military analogy. Nowadays we understand that our military is voluntary, and those who volunteer leave their home, family, friends, and vocation to enlist or subject themselves to their commander. They give all control of their lives over to the government or the military branch of the government. We have been enlisted as well, and we have subjected our lives to the Lord. He is our commander. He controls our present and our future. Everyone who gives their heart to the Lord, must give all control of their lives to Him and must continue to do so in order to thrive spiritually.

We are told to endure hardness. Can you imagine someone showing up for military duty with their pillow and their favorite blanket? When Debbie and I have a night to go to the beach, I take my own coffee machine which froths milk for a cappuccino. This is the base, which plugs into the wall, and then this part heats the liquid at the same time it is whipping the milk. The saints of the Lord gave me this cappuccino machine for my 50th birthday. It grinds the coffee, and when a button is punched twice, it distributes a double portion. Then I add the frothed liquid for a cappuccino. I use soy milk because it froths really well, but it froths so well that I have to add a little bit of regular milk too. I take my frother even if we go for just one night and Debbie looks at me and shakes her head. She says that we do not have room for all of this. I do confess that we do not have room for everything, so something has to go, but not the coffee machine. Really, though, I do not have to have it. When we fly, I do not take it. Can you imagine showing up for military duty and saying, “I am used to this, I must use this every day. This is my habit.” Obviously, it is not a hardship to be deprived of a coffee machine, but we will sacrifice something in the work of the Lord, so Paul says, endure hardness.

First of all, we were called. We did not volunteer, really. Second of all, we are being “made.” Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 1:11, “I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.” So we are called. If we do not feel that God has called us to be where we are and to do what we are doing, we will not survive. It has to be more than something of our own making, or of our mother’s making, or of man’s making. God called us. That is what brought us all here today.

Paul did not stop there. In Colossians 1:23, he said, “I Paul am made a minister” and later, in 2 Corinthians 3:6, he spoke of being made an able minister. We understand what it means to be called of God because we experienced it before we were ever asked to preach our first sermon. Many of us were asked a simple question, “Do you feel that you have been called to preach the Gospel?” Whether the answer was long or short, it could have been summarized as, “Yes.” That is why we are here. We feel that God called us to do this.

After we are called, we are “made” a minister. How do you make a bed? How do you make a pie? You spend some time and energy devoted to achieving the task. Similarly, we are made a minister. Being called to be a minister does not make us a minister. We must strive to do our best to excel with whatever natural tools we might have. We must do more than get by on natural ability, though. Any musician will tell you that they must practice. Some do have natural talent, but none gets by on natural talent alone. After a while, the blemishes would emerge, and even a novice or non-musician would be able to conclude that they had not devoted enough time or energy to their craft. Enduring hardness includes enduring hard work, so that we might be all that God would have us to be.

Suffer Trouble

Paul spent some months in Arabia and we can only gather that the Lord was using that Arabian experience to school him. We will have Arabian experiences where the Lord sends hardship designed to help us endure hardness. We cannot be soft. We will never survive. We must endure hardness. 2 Timothy 2:9 says, “Wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil doer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound.” Paul was imprisoned. He was treated as a criminal. Not too many of us, I suppose, will face the extent of persecution that Paul faced, but we will probably be mischaracterized and not appreciated. We cannot portray ourselves as victims. Pastors are not victims. Ministers are not victims. Christians are not victims. Jesus was not a victim. He gave Himself willingly to accomplish a certain goal. We suffer joyfully, as unto the Lord. Those in our congregation endure hardness also. They suffer trouble. Anytime any of us wants to complain about being overworked or underappreciated, we need to look around at those in our congregations. They get up early five days a week, commute for an hour or so, put in long hours, raise their families, and then are faithfully in place for practice and meetings as much as they can be. Everyone endures hardness and suffers trouble the same as we do.

Endure Afflictions

2 Timothy 4:5 tells us, “But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.” To watch is to be vigilant. To do the work of an evangelist is to keep proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ. In our context, it is to keep holding Gospel meetings. I remember Brother Nolan telling me one time that some people try to pull a rabbit out of their hat. He said, “Be careful, you might just get a rabbit.” We do not need to try to do something spectacular. Those who try to cut a wide swath in their ministry seldom accomplish it. We just hold meetings consistently, day in and day out, endure afflictions, suffer trouble if it comes, and remember that this is what others were doing when we came along and heard the Gospel. Let’s just keep doing it. So be watchful and do the work of an evangelist. 2 Timothy 2:9 defines our role: “Wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil doer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound.” That defines our role, which is to faithfully, consistently, and methodically deliver the Word of the Lord. The Word of the Lord is not bound. It moves about freely. It does its job, so our role is to just keep proclaiming it, knowing that God will be faithful to His Word. We keep to the Gospel message. We do not elevate peripheral issues by addressing them from the pulpit. We do not want to dignify that which is detracting by giving it more time and energy than it deserves from us. All this needs to be kept to the side and we need to keep focused on lifting up the Name of Jesus.

Stay Focused

I had an interesting experience in the last week when I was interviewed by two people. In one case, a student and professor from Reed College were putting together a paper. In the other case, a man from the Willamette Weekly newspaper interviewed me and then followed up with some emails. I am almost afraid to give any details about the interview, because the article is scheduled to come out next Wednesday and who knows what the reporter will choose to print from the hour-and-a-half conversation that we had. He was particularly nice, which worried me. He tried to gain my confidence and trust so that I would confide in him. He kept trying to get something controversial for his article. He asked questions such as, “So, you will be voting for Barak Obama?” I told him that I was not excited about either candidate and then I went back to my focus. If he left with any impression, it was that I was focused. He left with an understanding of the Biblical doctrine of the three spiritual experiences of the Latter Rain movement that sprang out of Bonnie Brae, and then Azusa Street in Los Angeles. He already had some background knowledge of that, so he asked me if I felt that other churches that did not hold on to the doctrines as we did were wrong. I reemphasized that we preach that everyone who has studied that movement confesses that the movement came out of a holiness work; that they followed salvation and sanctification, and the Holy Ghost was pleased to fall. I told him if we continue preaching that same doctrinal base then the Spirit of God will continue to bless. I then said that we will leave it to others to determine who went right and who went wrong. I kept focus. That is what we must do—stay focused and continue to do the work of an evangelist.

The reporter also wanted to know what I thought of the pastor friend of John McCain and of the Reverend Wright. I told him that I do not know McCain’s pastor, but that I was aware of the controversy surrounding Reverend Wright. He sent me a link to watch McCain’s pastor. I watched the first minute, and then without referring to the video I told him, “Come and attend our services, you will not hear about other denominations.” In other words, I told him, “Come and see and report on what you see.” Of course, if he were going to do that, we might as well have given him a Higher Way magazine and let him print that. So we want to stay focused.

When Brother Loyce Carver gave the dedication service at the groundbreaking of the headquarters’ building, he said that this organization puts wings on what happens in our Gospel meetings and sends it around the world. That is our modest role. All our material is intended to report on the meetings, the sermons, and the testimonies. We really want to repeat the same thing over and over again for the next one hundred years, because that is our mission and it works. So endure affliction, do the work of an evangelist. That is what we intend to do.

We Are Not Alone

Paul had his share of disappointments, and names are named at the conclusion of the Epistle. He said, in 2 Timothy 4:16, “At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me.” In the next verse, he said, “Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me.” So we are never alone, even when we feel lonely. We have the assurance that God stands with us. The saints of God stand with us, too. We are surrounded, whether it is by a handful or two or several handfuls of godly people who have a stake in this Latter Rain Gospel as well. They have been blessed by it as we have been, so we need to keep on target and know that God is going to continue to bless.

Closing Remarks

We pray that this camp meeting will be a means of strengthening, not only all of us, but everyone who attends. That is what we want and that is what God wants. We want to leave here more encouraged than when we came. We want to leave here having encouraged others, so that they leave more encouraged than they came. Let us all work to that end and believe that God will continue to be with us through these meetings.

Thanks so much for coming each year. We realize the sacrifice that everyone makes to attend and the help that so many of you give to make the camp meeting go smoothly. We appreciate that. We do not take it lightly. We need you. We all need one another, but we do want to express thanks to you. So God bless you. We will dismiss and look forward to a good camp meeting. Let’s stand and dismiss in prayer.

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