September 2009 Monthly Newsletter
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven (Heb. 12:25-26).
The significance of this letter is the "yet once more;" that is, in this dispensation, which has come in with Christ, the shaking first of the earthly side of things and the shaking of the heavenly side of things. This letter was probably written in the year 69. If that is true it was less than one year before Jerusalem was utterly destroyed, and the Jews were scattered throughout the nations. The earth side was surely shaken, and from that it has not recovered. There is no Temple. The prophecy is taken up and applied to the situation which is reached in this letter to the Hebrew Church.
So in the light of what is revealed we can be sure that Christianity, which is the heaven side, is going to be subjected to an awful shaking. I believe that it has already begun, and is spreading. It is the shaking of Christianity, the shaking of the spiritual, as different from the historic, earthly Israel. In the ordering of God there is a universal shaking in the economy of God. What for? In order that there will be nothing left but what God Himself has established.
This letter was written to a people whom God had taken out of the world for Himself, showing that it is possible for such a people to miss the way. It is possible for such people to make their position an earthly one, and that is the heartbeat of the letter, not to Israel only but Christians. This is the heavenly side. The true Church is the New Israel which God has taken out of the world, but through this letter God shows us a people who were like that, did in the end miss the way. They did not enter in "because of unbelief" They refused to do what they were told.
That is chapter three, chapter four opens with this: "The word of God is quick and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder to soul and spirit." Because there was no clear cut division between the flesh and spirit they perished in the wilderness. They lived after the flesh and God said, I will shake that also, and Christianity that is merely an earthly system, eighty five percent of the 21m century. Church, will have to go into the tire, and only that which is of the Spirit will survive.
It is with great heaviness of heart I write these lines. The world stands on the threshold of a night so dark it will make the dark ages look like noon day, and the Church, for the most part, is oblivious to what is happening. All the while multitudes are in the valley of decision begging somebody to show them the way back to reality. You and I must rise up to the occasion; there is no doubt in my mind but what we have come to the Kingdom for such a time.
If you and I will commit ourselves to the task, God through us, will supply and we will reap the greatest harvest since the book of Acts.
God bless you for your faithfulness in prayer and giving.
God bless you,
His bondservant
B. H. Clendennen
|
