We think this way at least a bit.
We think to ourselves, when we're thinking of
a lot of mainline denominations in the earth,
we think, I really wonder if many of
those people are saved at all.
Let's be honest people, okay?
This is the way we think.
We look at those churches and we say,
man, that's a pretty dead church.
It would be a miracle if even the
preacher in that church is saved.
We think this deep down, we don't say
it.
It's rude to say such things.
But I want to take you further than
that.
I want to take you further than that
because it's far more serious than that, because
I want to speak this to you.
True Christians, saved Christians are a rarity in
the church.
Saved Christians are a rarity in the church.
We're going to go down this line, explore
and think about it a bit, and what
the ramifications of all of this is.
Because, you know, the statistics in America are
amazing.
Forty percent of people go to church, or
at least say they go to church on
a fairly regular basis in America.
The most staggeringly high statistic in the world
by far.
You have to go to Korea to get
anywhere close to it.
And they have had massive revivals to get
to where they're at.
America just has this church-going thing going
on.
You know, someone was saying fifty percent of
Kansas City people go to church.
I want to say this to you, the
whole earth, the whole of America would be
utterly different if those people were actually saved.
I want to say this to you, that
you can walk into any Pentecostal church, or
charismatic church in this land, and find dramatic
numbers whom if a true preacher of righteousness,
a piercing preacher, walked in there and preached,
he would find the majority of the church
unsaved.
Pentecostal, charismatic, so-called spirit-filled people.
Now they may well speak in tongues.
They might have been speaking in tongues for
ten years, but that's not what's going to
save them, is it?
Walking in the Spirit saves.
On Judgment Day, Jesus will not be saying,
you had it right ten years ago and
therefore you're okay.
There is no one saved, always saved.
I don't believe in it.
I cannot find foundation for it in scripture.
Although I will say this, when the depth
of salvation is utterly true, I believe you
cannot return to sin.
And I believe scripture does back that.
Now let me ask you this question, what
if the thing that we think about as
way-up-here type Christianity, where we think,
wow, that's the deeper Christian life, that's the
Romans 8 experience, where you're walking, no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus.
And 1 John 3, where it says, those
who have their hope in Him, purify themselves
as He is pure.
They do not sin.
They do not walk in sin.
They cannot continue to sin.
1 John 3.
What if this high-level Christianity that we
think of as, wow, that's up there, to
God is basic ABC Christianity that every single
person is supposed to have.
In the 70s they used to have what
were called deeper life conferences.
You wanted to become a really spiritual Christian,
you'd go to a deeper life conference and
they would talk about death to self and
how to get closer to God.
Watchman Nee wrote a book about this called
The Normal Christian Life.
And he was right.
I want to say this to you, most
of the church today, especially in America and
the western nations, but especially in America where
it's just a habit to go to church,
most are unsaved.
And there would be an absolute revolution in
everything we know if just those people got
saved.
Now I'm not talking about saved as we
commonly understand it where we go forward and
ask Jesus into our heart.
None of that stuff.
I'm talking about the saved that we see
in the Bible.
The everyday New Testament Christianity type saved.
And I want to ask this, is there
another kind of Christianity?
Do we have this second tier thing going
on and where did we get it from?
Because I don't really see it in Jesus'
words.
All I see with him, you're a new
creation, and I mean utterly new or you
ain't.
And I don't see this between the lines,
Christian, where it's okay to be carnal and
okay to be fleshly and sinful and God
will accept you anyway.
I see the parable where Jesus says, you
come in by another door, pal, and you're
out of there.
You come in with a robe that is
not the white robe washed in the blood
of Jesus Christ.
You're going to be kicked out of that
wedding supper.
Doesn't matter how you got in there.
What if the level of salvation itself that
we have grown used to is utterly distorted?
You see, the reason I'm going down this
line is this.
God woke me up at four o'clock
one morning and spoke to me about this.
He was speaking to me about Charles Finney.
Now, I'm very aware of Charles Finney's ministry.
I've been reading about him for years.
Love the guy.
Charles Finney's ministry, get this, listen carefully.
Charles Finney's ministry was all about this.
Going to a place where they thought they
were Christians, proving to them with logic, common
sense, totally backed by scripture, he was a
lawyer.
He would just stand there and basically prove
to them, you're not saved at all.
You're not saved at all.
You are completely deceived.
And therein was the power of his message.
He would get people so shocked and devastated
because they'd belonged to the church for 20
years and they were a deaconess or something.
He would get them so utterly shattered after
one sermon.
Some of them could not even walk.
They would have to be carried out.
This is not some bless me, bless me
experience these people have had.
They were utterly destroyed by one sermon.
Instead of preaching assurance of salvation, he would
preach, you're not saved.
I'm going to show you why.
I'm going to show you how.
This is what scripture says and if you
are not this, you're not there.
And people had never heard anything like that.
You go to John Wesley, you find him
doing exactly the same thing.
In fact, one of the most scary and
most, it's so strong, it's almost horrific sermons
you can ever read is called Marks of
the New Birth by John Wesley.
If you ever see it on the internet,
you go read it.
It raises the heckles on the back of
your neck.
It's all based around 1 John chapter 3.
And he just goes through scripture after scripture
destroying people's assurance of salvation.
And little wonder to me that there were
times when John Wesley would finish preaching and
3,000 or 2,000 people would be
left on the ground on their face in
agony before God.
In agony.
We don't think this way.
We are taught easy believism, as it's termed,
from the cradle to the grave in today's
churches.
We do not any longer seem to believe
that straight is the gate and narrow is
the way that leads to life and few
there be that find it.
We somehow believe that we can create a
broad road in the church and many there
be that go down it and they're all
okay.
Listen to me carefully.
The first harvest that must occur in America,
the first harvest is our own people getting
saved.
Our own people getting saved.
How do I know they're not saved?
Because they demonstrate none of the marks of
the new birth.
They may have gone down the front.
They may have been prayed for by the
preacher who laid hands on them.
They may have even got themselves baptized.
All essential fundamentals of the faith.
Are they walking in Jesus?
Is the depth of God transforming them from
the inside out?
Do they experience that true Christianity that's talked
about in Romans?
What is true Christianity?
I want to define it to you and
clearly scriptural terms.
It's the answer of a good conscience towards
God.
The answer of a good conscience towards God.
Do you know what that means?
It means that as I'm walking before God
at this moment, there is absolutely no thing
between me and Him.
Nothing.
And if I cannot say that, I do
not believe I'm walking in scriptural salvation at
all.
Is it possible to walk in the Spirit
and to walk in a state which Finney
called walking in justification by faith?
Yes.
Finney from the day of his conversion walked
in it.
He wrote about it in his autobiography.
He said, I could not seem to even
sin had I wanted to.
By no effort I could make, could I
make myself feel condemned?
Nothing entered into that relationship that was suddenly
established before God.
And do you know what it is?
It's a relationship based on total heart purity
and walking in it before God.
Does your body stumble around?
You're still attached to the flesh, of course,
still attached to that sinful nature which is
sadly part of our life until the day
we die.
But yes, there's stumbling around going on, but
the state of our heart every moment of
every day is walking in purity before God.
I want to tell you that this is
Christianity and nothing less than that.
Do you know one of the most horrific
experiences I've had as a preacher was this.
I was preaching to a group of very
strongly praying and revival type Christians, the real
deal, down in a place in New Zealand.
I started talking about this very topic.
I said, in my experience intercessors are the
ones who understand this well because they know
they have to have clean hands and a
pure heart to truly get into the throne
room of God when they're praying.
And I said to them, intercessors I have
found have experienced this, do experience it, and
they don't maybe know how to define it,
but they know what it is when I
talk about it.
And I was just talking along these lines.
I was talking about walking before God with
a state of total heart purity before Him
as your state of being.
This is what Finney's talking about.
This is what Wesley's talking about.
And the blank stares that were on their
faces, these were some spiritual people.
These were not, this was not just a
congregation.
These people had come to hear me preach
about revival.
I knew the kind of people they were.
I went away from that meeting because the
stares on their faces were so blank it
showed me this thing.
I've been talking about just A-B-C
Christianity straight out of the New Testament today
and these people had no idea what I
was talking about.
No idea.
What is justification by faith?
It is possessing a faith before God that
you are walking in it and therefore God
sees you as righteous.
You are clothed with the robe that Jesus
has put upon you and He keeps it
clean by His Spirit.
And you walk in that and that is
Christianity.
And I want to say to you people,
if that is not your experience in God,
what makes you think you're going to be
part of the next revival?
Is it not you who needs reviving?
I'm not hearing many amens tonight brothers and
sisters.
Listen, we have gathered here from all over
America today, or this weekend, because we are
people passionately concerned about the state of the
church and getting her right before God.
Wesley was accused in his day of preaching
what was termed perfectionism because he preached the
kind of stuff I'm talking to you now.
If you go and study the background of
all this, Finney was accused of the same
thing.
But you know what they were preaching?
Their own experience.
You say, how can the standard of Christianity
you're talking about be a low standard Andrew?
It sounds to me like you're creating this
enormously high standard for Christians and expecting them
to jump the tallest building in a single
bound.
Are we going to be superhuman Andrew?
Ah well, yes we are.
Actually yes we are.
The simplest Christian is a new creation and
is clothed with Jesus and is seated with
him in heavenly places.
And if that is not you, what makes
you think you are one?
Now we're in a room right now with
a spiritual bunch of people.
I've preached this kind of stuff in congregations
where it's just a Sunday morning and whoever
shows up, shows up.
There is no more convicting preaching than simply
preaching this.
Is your name written in the book of
life?
And then talking about scriptures that qualify you
as being someone.
Yes, my name is written in that book
of life.
I've gone down this road where he starts
questioning their salvation and found it the most
convicting preaching I've ever preached.
Always.
In fact my favorite place to preach is
a Sunday morning in any old church anywhere.
Because all I do is open the scripture
and I start saying, here we're describing a
New Testament Christian.
Is that you?
And so many of them, their heart cries
out to them within.
No it is not.
There is no more convicting preaching than this.
That's why God woke me up at 4
o'clock in the morning.
My preaching changed from that day forward.
Whenever I preached that message from then on.
Conviction of sin.
People crying and weeping wanting to get right
with God.
Wanting to know.
If you look at Romans 8, it talks
about the spirit crying out to God.
Abba Father.
We know we are saved because the spirit
cries out to God.
Abba Father.
All these kinds of things.
You just go down this whole line and
people start questioning within themselves and they find
that no, that's not them.
Then I start talking about Judgment Day.
And I start talking about what it would
be like to find yourself in front of
Jesus that day who is very angry.
We know he will be angry.
We know he is the judge of all
the earth.
From whose face the earth and the heavens
fled away.
It says in Revelation.
The earth and the heavens fled away from
his face.
That's how angry he is on the Day
of Judgment.
All of his wrath is saved until then.
And you're expecting people to appear before him
with their filthy rags of their own righteousness
and try and make it into the kingdom.
We do this every day of the week
in the church.
We give them nothing to protect them in
that day.
I tell you there is only one thing.
You must have a pure white robe washed
continuously in the blood of Jesus.
If you appear before him on that day
in that robe you will be safe.
Nothing else will save you.
No rags of your righteousness.
Nothing you have done that will defend you
against the wrath of God.
Only that robe.
I tell you why we don't hear much
singing and much talk of the blood of
the lamb in our churches today people.
Because we don't preach the rest of the
gospel.
And so people don't really think they need
it.
Do you know the only time I've seen
a look of recognition about the words the
blood of the lamb come across an audience
is when I first preach judgment to them.
Because suddenly they see why they need to
be clean.
Suddenly they see what it's like to appear
before Jesus without that robe.
And they suddenly click.
Oh my goodness.
The blood of the lamb of course that's
what makes me clean.
If I don't have that I have nothing.
Do you know songs are no longer written
about the blood of Jesus in our church
today.
You got to scratch around to find good
worship songs.
Really heartfelt worship.
Most of it is just junk.
It comes from people who are semi-saved.
We have most of Christianity in our day
being made up for us by what Wesley
would call an almost Christian.
What is an almost Christian?
It's someone who goes to church.
Probably in our day raises their hands.
Sings all the songs.
Tithes.
Does all the right things.
Has been baptized.
I would say in our day and age
probably speaks in tongues.
And has no concept of living in Romans
8 at all.
They are an almost Christian and they write
all our songs.
They are an almost Christian and they preach
all our sermons.
They tell people how to get saved.
Do you know Charles Finney's pastor, a man
by the name of Reverend Gale, came to
Finney, I believe it was about 10 years
after Finney used to preach for him.
He said, Brother Finney, God has shown me
that all this time I've never been saved
at all.
Never.
Never been saved at all.
This was his pastor.
See Charles Finney's ministry was so controversial.
Do you know what they did in his
day?
They encircled him in.
Charles Finney, when he arose preaching this, it
was so incredibly powerful.
He was seeing whole audiences.
He said, I could not have cut them
off their seats as fast as they fell.
The solemnity of God would fall upon an
audience.
They would fall on their faces and they
would begin crying at the top of their
voices for God to save them and he
would have to stop preaching.
He had situations where people were riding into
town and as they crossed the bridge into
that town where Charles Finney was preaching revival.
They were instantly smitten with conviction of sin
and could not survive three weeks without being
converted.
Whether they left quickly or not, Charles Finney's
ministry is returning to the church.
Charles Finney is coming back.
This is what the new prophets are and
we will be accused of exactly the same
thing Finney was and Wesley was because they
preached what they themselves knew as an experience
in God.
How do I know it?
I have lived in it.
I walk in it.
It takes no effort whatsoever.
Does being a Christian and walking before God
with a state of heart purity before him
take effort?
No, therefore it is not salvation.
It would be my works.
If I can make myself righteous by things
that I do, is that salvation from God?
No.
That is Judaism.
That is the religion of the Pharisees.
They thought they could make themselves pure by
doing things.
If we do this, this, this and this,
if I keep myself decent and pure from
that and that, maybe I will make it
in.
This is no Christianity at all.
This is the twilight zone that is killing
us.
Christianity is this, walking in a state where
your conscience is clean before God.
You know it and he knows it.
Do I need to repent every quarter of
an hour to maintain it?
No.
Do I need to repent if I stumble
to such a degree where I start feeling,
hey, there is a little black spot has
got on to that rope.
There is an obstruction that has just entered
in because I said that thing or I
did such and such.
Do I need to repent at that moment?
Yes.
You can feel it.
If you are walking before God in a
relationship where it is just completely normal, you
just walk in it.
There is nothing extraordinary in it.
Not remotely extraordinary.
No effort involved.
You walk before God in a state of
heart purity before him.
It happened to Charles Finney on the day
he was converted.
He never lost it.
It happened to me, I believe, on the
day I got filled with the Holy Spirit
when I was 17 years old.
No effort whatsoever.
You just walk in it.
I didn't even understand it until I started
reading books like Watchman Nee's Normal Christian Life.
I suddenly started, hey, this is just Romans,
man.
It's just Romans.
It's just that we don't understand Romans anymore.
It's just that us Pentecostals who think we
are so great have a spirituality and an
understanding that is less than people 150 years
ago who didn't even have Pentecost.
It's less than what they had.
There are whole movements that rose up in
the 1800s, far more spiritual than Pentecostalism today.
Even the best of us.
Far more.
These are the movements that led to the
Welsh Revival, led to Azusa Street.
You go look at who got involved in
Azusa Street.
It was guys out of the Holiness Movement.
Go and look at where Smith Wigglesworth came
from.
He was out of the Holiness Movement.
This is not surface legalism these guys were
into.
Deep heart searching holiness until you are right
with God and you walk in it.
Where did Smith Wigglesworth's faith come from?
Years of getting closer to God.
Years of being anointed with one anointing and
then getting closer to God and getting a
new anointing even more than that.
Until he was walking in such a place.
Some of the things you hear about Smith
Wigglesworth are astounding.
Here again was a man who walked under
that anointing.
He was in a train one time in
Cardiff, Smith Wigglesworth.
He was sitting quietly just praying between him
and God.
Just meditating on God, communing with God as
he often did.
The man in front of him in the
train fell down on his knees and turned
to Smith Wigglesworth and said, Sir who are
you?
This man was in tears.
Sir who are you?
You convict me of my sin.
The whole train stopped being so noisy and
raucous and loud and just fell on their
knees and said, Sir who are you?
You convict us of our sins.
Charles Finney once walked into a cotton factory.
Some of you may have heard this story.
He walked into the cotton factory, Evans Mills
I believe it was in upstate New York.
All he did was look around.
He did nothing.
He looked around.
The girls were at their needle work at
the machines.
They all started to weep.
It spread like wildfire right through the factory
without him having to say a word.
Everybody started weeping.
The factory owner said, Right we are closing
the factory down.
We are going to have a Christian meeting.
You are going to get your hearts right
with God and we are going to get
back to work.
Praise God.
That is the kind of employers we need
in America.
This happened.
How do you walk under that anointing?
How do you preach this kind of message?
You must possess it before you can preach
it.
Why does it get called perfectionism and all
these other weird names when in fact all
it is is Christianity?
Because most of the church does not possess
it.
And if you start talking about it, they
cannot understand you.
What if most of the church is completely
unsaved?
What if the difference between revival and no
revival is simply this one thing.
A bunch of people in the church actually
getting saved and just starting to live it
out.
And that is revival.
It is just that we think it is
so extraordinary.
We think it is way up there in
the planets.
Do you know, there is no second design
for God's church where we live down here.
There is none.
The scriptures only tell about a church that
lives up here as its normal state.
The apostles go out preaching in the power
of God.
Preaching the kind of message we are talking
about tonight.
Do you know what we are talking about
tonight?
We are talking about the gospel.
It is just we have never heard it
before.
That is all.
We are talking about the gospel as Wesley
preached it and Finney preached it with the
most power probably of any man in history
since the apostles.
And that is why we have to get
back to it.
And it is nothing more than that.
It ain't extraordinary.
I mean I am trying to convince you
of it.
Half of you are looking puzzled and I
am not hearing many amens tonight people.
But I am telling you, I am not
preaching to you anything weird.
All you have to do is go read
Romans 8 and you will see what I
am talking about sitting right there.
There is no condemnation to them that are
in Christ Jesus who walk every day in
the Spirit.
For the law of the Spirit of life
in Christ Jesus has made me free from
the law of sin and death.
The law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus.
I want to ask you this.
Are you found in Him?
The law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus?
The difference between people who will appear before
Jesus on judgment day and make it into
the kingdom is simply that they have that
robe and they walk in it.
Jesus puts it on them.
They don't work for it.
How do we become clothed in Jesus?
You know this is another bugbear I have
with the church.
See to me even repentance is not enough
to get into this state.
As I was saying to you, it happened
to me when I got filled with the
Holy Spirit.
I was brought up a Baptist.
I had been asking Jesus into my heart
probably at least a hundred times.
In the early days when I was a
kid my dad says to me, yes you
really meant it.
When I was five years old he says
to me, yes you asked Jesus into your
heart and we did believe that you wanted
to make Him Lord of your life Andrew.
I want to say to you I never
experienced true Christianity until I was 17.
I know it for a fact.
Now they baptized me when I was seven.
I knew what it was about.
They baptized me in the ocean.
This is the days of the Jesus movement.
My dad was kind of part of that
movement.
I come from a heritage of revival.
My dad was a revival historian.
Wrote articles on revival.
Some of his articles I wish I could
republish them.
They are really, really good.
So that's the heritage I come from.
So when I was 17 and I got
filled with the Holy Spirit suddenly my Christian
life began.
Suddenly I was living it and walking it
and not just talking about it or hoping
for it.
This is why I'm so down on ask
Jesus into your heart because it did nothing
for me.
It did nothing.
I've been in situations, I used to belong
to navigators and all these kind of things.
We used to go around getting people to
ask Jesus into their hearts.
I used to completely witness the fact that
nothing happened.
Has this person been utterly transformed in the
innermost man?
No.
He has not.
Repeat this prayer after me.
Nowhere in scripture is it found.
In fact not even a remote resemblance to
it.
What happened in scripture?
Let's go there.
Turn with me to Acts chapter 2.
We might as well go to the book
of Acts because we're talking about that type
of New Testament Christianity.
Not what we've invented.
Now bear in mind people, I'm not saying
that what we're about to read here is
the whole answer either.
It's one thing to receive the Holy Spirit.
It's another thing to walk in the Spirit.
Acts 2 verse 37.
It's very significant scripture because it's the first
time we are seeing people getting saved in
the book of Acts.
First time.
Listen to this.
Now when they heard this they were cut
to the heart.
They said to Peter and the rest of
the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?
And Peter said to them, repent and be
baptized every one of you in the name
of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your
sins.
I could open a massive controversy with that
one sentence.
Listen to this.
Be baptized every one of you in the
name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of
your sins.
I thought we asked Jesus into our heart
for the forgiveness of our sins.
Why is this guy saying we're getting baptized
for the forgiveness of our sins?
I digress.
We shall carry on.
Repent, be baptized and you shall receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit.
And then it says a little bit further
down, verse 41.
So those who received his word were baptized.
There were added that day about 3,000
souls.
Why would you baptize people straight away?
Baptism is very inconvenient.
I had a phone call one day from
a guy.
He said, I've got 23 people that I
want you to come and baptize.
Why he rang me, I have no idea.
When you are baptizing 23 people and praying
over them and hopefully praying prophetic prayers over
them, all this kind of stuff, it takes
an age to baptize 23 people.
Might as well spend your afternoon.
3,000?
Crusade evangelism does not include baptism, but book
of Acts does.
I wonder why that is.
Why is it that in the Iron Curtain
countries they would put barbed wire around the
baptismal tanks?
They didn't mind them asking Jesus into their
heart, but when they went to get baptized,
that was seen as them truly coming into
something, and that is when the persecution came.
Why is that?
I've had people coming back from India saying
the same thing to me.
In India, it's okay to go forward at
a crusade.
It costs very little.
In fact, people do it as a matter
of course all the time.
You hear these incredible statistics.
Benny Hinn went to India and saved half
the country, etc.
Well, those guys are quite used to going
forward at altar calls.
Half of those people probably went forward at
the last guy who held a crusade.
Seriously, no joke, because that is not a
conversion from an entire way of life to
an entire way of life.
Many of those people, as soon as they
get baptized, that's when they're likely to lose
their inheritance, get killed.
No joke.
Why is baptism important to the devil?
What does he know is going on there,
Jesus?
It says simply in the Bible, it's death.
It's death and burial.
Is it merely symbolic?
Maybe to us.
I wonder if it's totally symbolic to God.
I have an inkling of this, that the
devil knows it's death, that God knows it's
death, and the only stupid people in the
world who don't is us.
What did Derek Prince say when he wrote
a book about expelling demons?
He said one certain way to get rid
of a habitual sin or a demonic stronghold
in your life.
Many, many occasions, he said in his experience,
get that person baptized in water.
Something is cut off.
In fact, if you look up every reference
in the entire New Testament to baptism, you'll
see this concept of circumcision of the heart.
You will see that it is a cutting
off.
You will see that it is a burial.
You'll see that it is a death.
Never is it spoken of as merely a
symbol or ritual.
Jesus did not believe in such things, not
for his church.
He doesn't just bring rituals for the sake
of it into the church.
Why do that?
Is communion a ritual?
I believe not.
I believe if you take communion in faith,
it is life.
Otherwise, why did the Book of Acts church
take communion every day?
Why did they baptize people straight away?
Because it was death.
Romans 6 in fact says, let's go there
quickly.
Let's go to Romans chapter 6.
If you want to hear the kind of
Christianity I'm talking about today, you read Romans
5, 6, 7 and 8 and it's all
there.
There's nothing missing, nothing weird.
It's just we don't read it right.
That's all.
We don't read it with New Testament eyes.
We read it with 20th century or 21st
century stupid blinded 2,000 years past the
event eyes trying to understand something that we've
lost.
God wants to restore it to the church.
These things that I'm talking about tonight are
keys to the next revival.
They are not little bylines.
We're talking about fundamentals.
These things are so basic that when it
lists the six most basic fundamentals of the
Christian faith in Hebrews chapter 6, these are
what the things it's talking about.
We don't even have the basics right, people.
We don't even get someone saved the Bible
way ever.
There's only one person I've really come across,
especially in recent days, that got saved the
Bible way.
That's my wife.
You know, when I met her, she had
been a Christian for several months.
This is the way she became a Christian.
The night before she went to the church,
she repented before God.
She got before God and just really, truly
repented.
She went to that church and they happened
to believe in baptizing people straight away.
So after the meeting, she went and got
baptized in somebody's bathtub.
She came out of the water speaking in
tongues full of the glory of God.
I met her three months later and I
fell in love with her spiritually and for
who she is.
I fell in love with her.
I fell in love with someone who was
on fire for God and had become a
Christian the way we're all supposed to.
Most of us have had to become this
long drawn out, oh, we'll repent or we'll
ask Jesus into your heart one year and
ten years later, if we're lucky, we kind
of repent totally for the first time and
then maybe we got baptized, but we think,
wow, should I get re-baptized?
Man, and then we accidentally one day happen
into a meeting where we get filled with
the Holy Spirit and we think this is
okay and all we're doing is catching up
with day one of Book of Acts Christianity
and we wonder why we're so backward.
Day one.
Every Christian in the New Testament had this
from day one.
Romans 6 verse 3.
The whole of Romans 6 is about baptism
and dying.
Romans 7 is about dying to the law
or the need to die to the law.
Romans 8 is about victory and living in
victory by the Spirit of God.
Okay?
It's all there.
Everything I've been talking about is there.
Romans chapter 6 verse 3.
Do you not know that all of us
who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death?
We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism
into death so that as Christ was raised
from the dead by the glory of the
Father, we too might walk in newness of
life.
I want to ask you the question, what
if we haven't been baptized into his death?
Are we dead?
If we die with him, we shall also
live with him.
If we endure, we shall also reign with
him.
What if I never died?
What if I go to a stupid church
in the 21st century that sprinkles me and
tells me I'm okay and never buries me
at all?
We don't think this way.
Do you know why?
Because we're 2,000 years past the event
and we simply don't think in New Testament
terms anymore.
We've lost it all.
Occasionally, some guys come along who recover some
of it and there's a massive revival around
recovered truth.
That's what Wesley and Finney were doing.
It goes for a while, usually while they're
alive, and it dies out again and there
has to come another wave to just get
us up to understanding the most basic fundamental
things.
It dies off and the church loses it
again and we have to recover and recover
all the time.
We don't even know Romans, the most basic
book in the Bible and yet the most
deep book in the Bible.
If I have not been baptized into Jesus
Christ's death, am I dead?
I believe not.
Should I be going therefore into all the
world like Jesus told us to, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit?
You better believe yes, because that's part of
the gospel.
How do I know it's part of the
gospel?
We're told that Philip was preaching the gospel
to the Ethiopian eunuch and the next thing
he asks him is, oh well so why
can't I get baptized?
Here's some water.
Let me get baptized then.
Philip was preaching the gospel to him.
The response was, what hinders me being baptized?
Oh no, it's too inconvenient.
Imagine having the crusades and we'd have to
have a tank out the back.
Oh dear, oh my goodness.
So much easier to get them to come
to the front, say a two line prayer,
write their little name on a little piece
of card and send them home and say,
a church will get in touch with you
sir, not a problem.
Welcome to the kingdom of God.
Convenience and eternal death for anybody so deceived
as to believe that rubbish.
Back into Acts.
Second group of people that we come across
that are being saved on a massive level.
The entire city of Samaria responds to Philip
preaching the word.
Acts chapter eight.
Acts eight verse twelve.
But when they believed Philip as he preached
good news about the kingdom of God in
the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized,
both men and women.
Even Simon himself believed and after being baptized,
he continued with Philip.
It says he was watching the signs and
miracles.
Now listen to this.
Verse fourteen.
When the apostles of Jerusalem heard that Samaria
had received the word of God, they sent
to them Peter and John who came down
and prayed for them that they might receive
the Holy Spirit, for it had not yet
fallen on any of them, but they had
only been baptized in the name of the
Lord Jesus.
Is there any mention in the book of
Acts of anyone repeating a prayer, giving their
heart to the Lord, asking Jesus into their
heart or into their life or any such
thing?
I tell you, not one.
Can I search the New Testament from beginning
to end to find a reference to such
a thing?
No, there are none.
We preach falsehood and lies and we have
a church that is utterly lukewarm and probably
unsaved because we do not even preach the
basics.
Now you know Romans eight Christianity is a
step beyond this.
We're going back here to the things you
do the first day you want to come
to the Lord.
If you were in front of an apostle
in the book of Acts, they would have
clearly told you this, repent, be baptized and
you shall receive the gift of the Holy
Spirit.
We tell them something that's utterly different from
that.
And then not only that, we compound it
by never teaching anybody how to actually walk
in the spirit, how to walk in the
spirit.
What is the faith that justifies us before
God that keeps us from his wrath on
that day?
It is that we are justified.
It means that means made right in his
sight.
We walk in it.
It is Christianity.
It's what sets us apart.
We're not a religion where we're trying to
be decent.
Even repentance alone cannot deliver this.
Otherwise John the Baptist would have had all
his followers walking in this and they didn't.
Repentance alone cannot get you into this.
It must come by death and resurrection.
I must die and be remade a new
creation.
All things are passed away.
Behold.
Isn't that true?
Now I've missed out one in the middle
there which is a bit complicated but shows
exactly the same pattern and if you want
to read it later it's in Acts chapter
10 and it's Cornelius and his household becoming
Christians.
How did they become Christians?
Actually while Peter was speaking to them the
Holy Spirit fell on them.
They all started to speak in tongues and
glorify God and then he commanded that they
be baptized immediately in water.
I think we've established the pattern.
I want to say this to you before
we just leave the subject.
I want to say this to you.
I hold great question whether someone who has
been sprinkled and even if they get baptized
in the Holy Spirit whether they are okay.
Great question.
I'll tell you why.
Have they died?
An essential part of Christianity is that you
have died.
That your old life was laid down.
That you were buried with him and yet
we have many Presbyterian spirit filled people, Methodist
spirit filled people, Catholic spirit filled people and
we act as though they are okay and
we never challenge them about this stuff because
it just seems rude, obnoxious to say look
I really believe you know you need to
be buried with him in baptism.
It's not okay that you've just been sprinkled
sir.
We never say that kind of thing because
it's just too outrageous.
I want to say to you how many
of the people in the earth have been
actually saved the Bible way let alone walking
in the Spirit?
So few, so few.
You know I only have to remember back
to when I was 17 the day before
I got baptized in the Holy Spirit and
the day after were like night and day.
Night and day.
I was completely transformed.
I was a timid man pleasing trying to,
man following little guy that just had no
backbone to stand for anything.
The day after I got baptized in the
Holy Spirit I was a spiritual zealot on
fire and in love with God and I
never changed.
There is no comparison between Andrew before and
after and many of us have that testament.
We can look back at our lives and
say man yes that was an incredible change.
Give it to others they need it.
Share it with others they need it.
Just because we live in a Pentecostal day
does not mean people have really heard about
it.
They have heard a load of nonsense most
of them.
They have seen Benny Hinn on TV and
said we don't want no part of this
charismatic stuff.
Look at that guy parading around earning big
bucks etc etc.
You know what they talk like.
Time for us to make up for that.
In closing I want to get back to
this.
This is far more appropriate for all of
us and for the people we are speaking
to.
I want to ask you this.
Do you walk in a place before God
today where you can say I walk before
him with a clear conscience?
God looks right through you and it is
your choice or not especially if you have
gone through these basic steps.
In other words basically you are there.
You are meant to walk in the spirit.
You go through these basic steps and you
simply walk.
Walk before him with total transparency and he
sees nothing in you.
There is nothing inside of you that he
sees as sin.
Is that your state before God?
When God looks at your heart or are
you one of these people really you are
living in John the Baptist land.
If you are one of these guys.
What I mean by that is if you
live in this place where you have to
repent every day.
If you live in this place where every
time you pray you want to come into
the throne room of God.
You have to go through this little repentance
procedure.
The marks of a true Christian is this.
The way into the holiest is already open
to you.
You walk into it the instant you begin
to pray because the throne room of God
is open to his children.
We are seated with him in heavenly places
and if that is not your experience what
makes you think you are okay?