INTRODUCTION
"We need revival...but it does little for men to cry out for extra-biblical manifestations when biblical principle is violated all around us...there is little need for the devil and evil men to oppose a man praying for revival unless he is also laboring for reformation. We have been given truth! And we cannot simply do what is right in our own eyes and then expect the holy spirit to come down and bless our labors!"
"I would make one suggestion: see to it that your knees are bleeding before you begin any sort of reformation."
"There is a great awakening going on in this country. And not only in this country....i see young me going back to the rock from which we were cut. They are reading spurgeon and whitfield. They are still listening to Ravenhill and Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Tozer and Wesley...and it's a great, incredible movement...I wouldn't have dreamed 15 years ago that i would've seen the awakening that i've been seeing today."
Many people have the idea that they are going to pray in the revival. And other people say revival will come whether you pray for it or not. I'm not in either one of those camps. But I know this; when I see men and women and young people all over the world praying for an awakening to me that is the firstfruits of the revival...I can count on it that he who brings in those firstfruits will bring in the harvest."
1. A PRACTICAL DENIAL OF THE SUFFICIENCY OF SCRIPTURE
2 Timothy 3:15-17
"There's been a battle for the Bible...but there's only one problem. When you come to believe as a people that the Bibie is inspired, you've only fought half the battle. Because the question is not only is the Bible inspired or is it innerant. The major question following that that must be answered: Is the Bible sufficient? Or do we have to bring in every social science and cultural study in order to know how to run a church?
Why is it that evangelism and missions and so-called church growth is more shaped by the anthropologist, the sociologist, and the wall street student who is up on all cultural trends? All the activity in our church must be based on the Word Of God! Everything we do ought to flow from the theologian and the exegete. The man who opens his Bible and only has one question: "What is Thy will oh God?"
A church ought to be seeker-friendly but a church ought to recognize there is only one Seeker: His name is God. And if you want to be friendly to someone, if you want to accomodate someone, accomodate Him and His glory!
Isaiah 8:19
2. AN IGNORANCE OF GOD
Jeremiah 9:23-24
Psalm 50:21-22
"Many of you think talking about the attributes of God and theology is all high ivory tower stuff that has no practical application. Listen to yourself speak!...Do you know why all your Christian bookstores are filled with self-help books and five way to do that and six way to be godly and ten ways not to fall? Because people don't know God! So they have to be given all sorts of trivial little devices of the flesh to keep them walking..."
"When was the last time you attended a conference on the attributes of God? When was the last time as a pastor you taught for a solid year on who God is? How much of all the teaching that goes on in America has anything to do with who God is?"
"Do you honeslty think you're going to be thrilled about swinging on gates of pearl and walking down streets of gold for an eternity? The reason why you won't lose your mind in eternity is because of this. There is One there who is infinite and glorious and you will spend an eternity of eternities tracking Him down! And you will never get your arms even around the foothill of His mountain! Start now!"
Sunday morning is the greatest hour of idolatry in the entire week of America. Because people are not worshipping the one true God-the great mass at least-but are worshipping a god formed out of their own heart and flesh. They've made a god just like themselves and he looks more like santa than yahweh.
"There can be no fear of the Lord among us because there is no knowledge of the Lord among us."
3. A FAILURE TO ADDRESS MAN'S MALADY
"Men must be brought to a knowledge of self before they surrender self over to God...men are made into such a fallen manner now that you must cut away absolutely every hope in the flesh before they be brought to God!"
"When we treat sin superficially...we are fighting against the Holy Spirit. When He comes He will convict the world of sin. There are very popular preachers today who are more concerned about giving you your best life now than they are eternity. And they brag about the fact that they do not mention sin in their preaching. I can tell you this; the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with that ministry when a man says he has nothing in his ministry dealing with sin because the Holy Spirit does!"
"When you don't deal specifically, passionately, lovingly with men and their depraved condition the Holy Spirit is nowhere around you."
"We are deceivers when we deal with the malady of men lightly. We are not only deceivers but we are immoral....he does not tell them the news most necessary to save their life."
"I hear preachers say today, "No, no no. You don't understand brother Paul. We're not like the people of the day of John and Charles WEsley. We're not as hearty as they are. We're broken. We don't have as much self-esteem. We're feeble. We can't bear such preaching.' Have you ever studied the lives of these men? What they preached their culture couldn't bear it either. No one has ever been able to bear the preaching of the gospel! They will either turn against it with the fierceness of an animal or they will be converted!"
"And this thing about self-esteem...our greatest problem is that we esteem self more than we esteem God."
"When you refuse to teach on the radical depravity of men it is an impossiblity that you bring glory to God. His Christ, and His cross. Because the cross of christ and the glory thereof is most magnified when it is placed in front of the backdrop of our depravity. She loved much because she was forgiven much and she knew how much she'd been forgiven because she knew how wicked she was."
4. AN IGNORANCE OF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST
"I want to submit to you that this country is not gospel-hardened. It is gospel ignorant because most of its preachers are."
"We have taken the glorious gospel of our blessed God and reduced it down to four spiritual laws and five things god wants you to know with a little superstitious prayer at the end and if someone repeats it after us with a little sincerity we Pope-ishly declare them to be born again."
"I am amazed after I talk about what I'm going to talk about now how many godly believers of 30/40 years walking in the faith come up to me with tears saying, 'Brother Paul I've never heard this before in my life.' Yet it is the historical doctrine. of redemption. of propitiation."
"The gospel begins with the nature of God and it goes from there to the nature of man and the fallenness thereof. Those two columns set us up for "the great dilemma." The great dilemma: "If God is just, He cannot forgive you." How can God be just and justify the wicked?"
"[The Father] turned away because His Son became sin...What was in the cup?...I don't want to take away from the physical sufferings...but the cup was the cup of God's wrath...someone had to die...crushed under the wrath of God...Christ was able to redeem because He was crushed under the justice of God. And having satisfied divine justice with His death, God is now just and the justifier of the wicked."
"When you leave the gospel behind...there is no longer any power...then you've got to go to all the tricks of the trade to convert men and we all know...they do not work."
"On the day of the Second Coming you will understand absolutely everything about the Second Coming. But you will be an eternity of eternities in heaven and you will not even begin to comprehend the glory of God in Calvary."
"Young preacher, young man, listen to me! Go after Him on that tree! What it means...you'll need nothing...if you only catch of glimpse of what he did on that tree!"
4. AN IGNORANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF REGENERATION
"Calvinism is not the issue...the issue is regeneration...I could have fellowship with Wesley, Ravenhill and Tozer and all the rest because regardless of where they stood on the other issue they believed that salvation could not be manipulated by the preacher. That it was a magnificent work of the power of almighty God and with them therefore I stand."
"We are always Ezekiel standing in that valley of dry bones...and we walk out there...and we prophesy and we say, 'Hear the Word of the LORD!.' And we know that the wind of God must blow on these slain or they will not rise again. When you have fully grapsed that in the innermost part of your being you will no longer give yourself to the manipulation that is so often carried out in the name of evangelism in this country."
"What we face is the sinner's prayer. If there's anything I've declared war against, it is that...in the same way that infant baptism was the golden calf of the Reformation, for the Baptists and the Evangelicals and everyone else following them today I'll tell you that sinners prayer has sent more people to hell than anything on the face of the earth."
5.AN UNBIBLICAL GOSPEL INVITATION (unbiblical evangelism)
Witness: "Sir, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life."
American Non-Christian: "What? God loves me? That's great 'cause I love me too! I have a wonderful plan for my life too! And If I accept Him into my life I'll have my best life now? This is absolutely wonderful!
Exodus 34:6-7
"Evangelism begins with the nature of God. Who is God? Can a man recognize anything about his sin if he hath not a standard with which to compare himself? If we tell him nothing but trivial things about God that tickle the carnal mind then will he ever be brought to genuine repentance and faith?"
"We begin with the discourse of the full counsel of who God is...we tell him from the start it may cost him his life."
"You have authority to tell men the gospel, you have authority to tell me how to be saved, and you have authority to teach men biblical principles of assurance. But you have no authority to tell men they are saved. That is the work of the Holy Spirit of God."
"If they live without growth even in the context of the church in continued carnality we blame it on the lack of personal discipleship and write it off as the doctrine of the carnal Christian...can a Christian struggle with sin? Yes. Can a Christian fall into sin? Yes. Can a Christian live in a continuous state of carnality all the days of his life not bearing fruit and truly be Christian? Absolutely not."
6. IGNORANCE REGARDING THE NATURE OF THE CHURCH
"The ultimate product of revival will be the planting of biblical churches."
"There is not a remnant of believers in the church...the church is the remnant...Because of a lack of biblical preaching, the so-called church is filled with carnal wicked people identified with Christianity."
"We don't have a lot of churches in America, we have a lot of really pretty brick buildings on finely manicured lawns. Just because someone says they're of the church and a Christian doesn't make it so."
"Stop saying all these silly things that the body of christ is divided and it's a mess and it's full of sin. I would not talk about the bride of Christ that way if I was you. What you've got is a bunch of goats and tares among the sheep. And because very little biblical compassionate church discipline is practiced they live among the sheep, they feed on the sheep and they destroy the sheep. And those of you who are leaders in the church are going to pay a high penalty when you stand before the One who loves them because you didn't have enough courage to stand up and confront the wicked."
7. A LACK OF LOVING AND COMPASSIONATE CHURCH DISCIPLINE
Basis: Matthew 18:15-17
"Some say, 'We are too loving. We can't practice church discipline.' You're more loving than Jesus? He's the one who commanded this."
"I'm not talking about critical, legalistic, hateful men. There's enough of those. I'm talking about a man, a group of elders/leaders who love enough to lay their life on the line because they know this is not a game...but eternity is at stake...the salvation of souls."
"[People say], 'There are just as many people going out the back door as coming in the front door and the reason why it's happening is that we're not discipling.' NO. The reason is they're not getting converted...His sheep hear His voice and follow Him. They never hear a true gospel and no one ever dealt with their souls."
"We spend a fortune discipling goats hoping they will become sheep. You can't teach a goat to a sheep. A goat becomes a sheep by the supernatural working of Almighty God."
8. A SILENCE ON SEPARATION (no serious teaching on holiness)
"If God truly converts a man he will continue working in that man...He will see to it that the work He has begun will be finished."
"If there's no growth in holiness, God's not working in your life. If He's not working in your life it's because you're not a child."
"Look at the difference between Jacob & Esau. 'Jacob I loved, Esau I hated (Romans 9).' Jacob was blessed, Esau was blessed. How did God demonstrate His judgement and wrath against Esau and His love toward Jacob? He let Esau run wild. No work of discipline, no work of godliness--nothing. But he beat Jacob to death almost every day of his life. The loving discipline/correction of God to bring us to holiness."
"If you think you've given him your heart, you will give Him your body. Don't say Jesus has the core of your being and it doesn't affect your body...We've become a people that use the interior work of hte Spririt as an excuse to say that nothing it going to happen on the outside."
"Some of you young men, you cry out probably more than I do that the Spirit of God would fill you and work in you. But it only takes one half hour of television to so grieve Him he would be miles from you. 99% pure, 1% sewer; I'm not drinking."
9. UNBIBLICAL VIEW ON MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
"Psychology and sociology have replacd the Scriptures with regard to the family."
"I find a godly man who has raised godly children and I go and latch onto him."
"Based upon what are you raising your children and loving your wife? If you can't start going into Scriptures right now and pulling them apart and showing me how your family is founded upon it I can assure you that you are a captive of psychology, sociology, the whims and the lies of this age."
"Sunday school...no matter what denomination you're a part of...I can assure you that your denomination spends multi-millions of dollars on sunday school material, multi-millions of dollars on conferences, on teaching teachers how to teach sunday school...let me ask you: How much money does your denomination spend and how many conferences and man-hours are put in to teach fathers to teach their children?"
"Now I'm not saying children can't come together in groups and be catechized and be taught or anything but if that ever even begins to hint to supplant the ministry of the father in the home blow it to pieces!"
10. UNTITLED (exposition of 1 Timothy 4)
"God is seeking men of character with polished swords"
"You cannot learn doctrine well until you follow the doctrine you learn!"
"The more you trust in the arm of the flesh the less you're going to see of the power of God"
"Young men, discipline yourself to prayer. Discipline yourself to the systematic reading of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation-over and over and over again. Discipline yourself in your speech. Discipline yourself in the company you keep. Discipline yourself when you go to bed and when you rise up! This is a war! Discipline yourelf!"
"While you are a young man, while there is strength in your labor with all your might! Take those stupid video games of yours and crush them under your feet! Throw the TV out the window, you were made for greater things than these. If you're a child of the King nothing on this earth can satisfy you."
1 Tim. 4:15
"Get yourself in your study. Drink deep. Be so absorbed in the knowledge and the knowing of God that people say, 'Where is he? He used to be such a man about town.' He is absorbed in these things."
"We are men of God. We are ministers of the Most High. There should be an otherness about us. We should have a distant gaze in our eyes toward a distant hill. The greatest thing we can do for our people is to be men of God absorbed in the things of God so that when we open our mouth the Word of God comes out."
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