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Ron McGatlin
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Joined: 08/23/2004
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Posted: 10/17/2013 at 9:48am | IP Logged Quote Ron McGatlin







OpenHeaven.com Digest Publication


In This Issue
1. The Future of House Church
2. The REAL Emerging Church
3. News Headlines


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OpenHeaven.com Digest




1. The Future of House Church

By Ron McGatlin

From my perspective, it appears that the house church movement has been a forerunner of something more urgent and more essential than has been recognized for the most part so far. The greatest value and significance of the home group meetings are yet ahead of us.

The dependence on the corporate meeting as the center of Christian faith and activity will change. Indeed, it has already begun to change. The church meeting at the church building has for centuries been the center foundational core of spiritual life. The spiritual effect on the home and community flowed outward from the center church structure. This is beginning to change and will be pressed by external circumstances to change even more rapidly in the near future.

Several factors are aligning to move the center core of Christianity from the church meeting and church building to family and home centricity. Spiritual life will flow from the home and extended families to larger spiritual gatherings and eventually to all aspects of the community and the culture.

Significantly increased persecution will be one of the major external factors affecting this change. Meetings in church buildings will become unsafe as Christians become fair game for disillusioned and angry people inflamed by anti-Christ spirits and radical political agendas. Another related factor is economic crises. Economic suffering and lack will not allow provision for church buildings to be maintained. The desperate need for basic life provisions will draw believers to bond together to help one another. There will be a turn toward much greater dependence on God and a strong desire to comfort and care for one another. Thus the family and small group home gatherings will become the core of spiritual life and activity.

Small “house church” gatherings have been a step in the direction of home and family becoming the core of spiritual life from which life and ministry flows outward into the culture and every aspect of life including larger gatherings. A whole new focus on personal life in God and the practical reality of living in Christ and Christ living in us will replace the traditional practice of meeting with God once a week in a church building. Believers will no longer be spending one day focusing on God and living life the rest of the week with only a limited influence of spirituality in their lives. Every moment of every day will be lived in the influence of Spirit God.

This change releases the things of God from confinement within the walls of the church system box. The exclusion of God from real daily life came about through the mentality of “going to church” instead of the reality of being the church all day every day. It was also moved forward by the unfortunate misinterpretation of constitutional law in America separating the church from all government. This played out as separation of God from real everyday life.

The true church centered in real life and focused on the true Head, Christ Jesus, opens the way for the pure kingdom of God lifestyle to flow into every aspect of our lives.

Navigating a Major Turn

A small boat can turn very quickly in a small radius. A very large ship turns very slowly over a very large radius. Like the small boat a smaller group put together by God can turn much more quickly than a denomination or a mega church. A major turn is taking place in the worldwide church. Briefly stated the turn is from religious church form to the kingdom of God reality experience of Christ alive and well in His people.

The smaller gatherings in houses provide much more potential for a faster turn toward kingdom of God living on earth. Turning the large traditional church systems into the freshly restored works of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God lifestyle has proven to be very slow and difficult if not impossible. It will be much less of a problem for the developing smaller more intense house church groups to make the transition. The one-on-one and small group interaction will enable a more rapid movement to the next level of the kingdom of heaven coming forth on earth.

Larger Corporate Gatherings

From these foundational core groups the love, power, and wisdom of God will flow outward spawning larger gatherings of many small groups coming together occasionally to worship, praise, and experience the awesome corporate anointing of God. These can be open powerful gatherings as long as it is possible to have them. They may be driven underground by severe persecution but will be even more precious to the people if that occurs.

Mobile mature sons of God (not gender specific) gifted as apostles will move from city to city feasting on the glory of God with many groups coming together at larger local corporate gatherings. All of this takes place under the One Head, Christ Jesus, by the Holy Spirit. Headquarters is always only in Heaven and in the hearts of God’s people. The mobile apostolic servants will bring encouragement, enlightenment, connectivity, and spiritual direction to the people. A plurality of mobile apostolically gifted servants will bring different aspects of the kingdom that causes fullness and connection to the various parts of the glory of the kingdom reality in the people.

Within the smaller groups God will raise up gifted maturing sons and daughters to lead the less mature into more of the meat of the gospel of the kingdom in Christ. All of the ascension gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher will be present and growing up within the small groups. Many gifts that have been dormant in the pew sitters of religious type systems will be released to mature and to function among the small groups. Rather than the religious systems training a few people as ministers in an academic educational atmosphere, there will be many growing up spiritually trained in true life reality of God moving by His Spirit in practical experience of the love, power, and wisdom of Christ in His people by the Holy Spirit.

God’s Tool Kit

I am giving special tools to My faithful servants to assist in this time of transition from where you have been into the greater reality of My kingdom now within and among you. I am issuing tools to enable My sons to employ My strategies into the practical transition of the ages. Many have gone before you and have paved the way for this journey and for the many battles to forever conquer the inner enemies of your souls.

A sharp sickle to cut down the false growth of fruitless words and beliefs propagated in My kingdom by the enemy of your soul -

A sharp sword to divide asunder the mixture of your foolishness with My glorious word of truth -

A large hammer of strong heavy words to smash the structures of flesh that have grown into mountainous rocks of doubt and unbelief of the anti-god of your foolish lust and pride -

A plow of hardened steel to break up the hardened fibrous growth of roots of your resistance and hard-pressed feelings of resentment that leads to rebellion -

An unending bottle of the oil of liquid fire of My love to heal all things, purify all things, restore all things, accomplish all things, believe all things, and endure all things with burning consummation of all things of My kingdom in you, redeeming and reclaiming the future of all created life and substance of My world-

A plethora of My wisdom to meet all needs and answer all questions with unanswerable strength.

Thank You, Father God, for your gifts of tools with which to serve You and Your kingdom. We humbly and most graciously receive the special anointing and gifts to do the work of transition into the fullness of life that you have prepared for your people to live and proclaim in Your world. Help us, God, to never misuse your power tools in even the slightest way. Father, may we never be a detriment to Your name and Your kingdom of heaven coming forth on earth. Now, Lord God, we rest in You, in Your words, and Your ways. We say, LORD, here we are humble and on our faces before you in adoration and thankfulness that you have chosen and allowed us to be a part of Your powerful move to cleanse, restore, and renew our world to Your kingdom of heaven on earth as it is in heaven. So be it, Father, as You have spoken and You have given, so it is in us this day. In the name of our Lord Jesus we receive with thanksgiving all of Your provision. Amen.

Yes, the house church movement and the wilderness wonderings have all had their purpose in preparing His people for the great and terrible day of the Lord and the awesome advent of the fullness of the King and His kingdom.

If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit - Rom 5:25.

Live in the Spirit, Walk in the Spirit,

Ron McGatlin

archive.openheaven.com
basileia@earthlink.net




2. The REAL Emerging Church

By Greg Austin

We want the reader to understand that we are not among those who have rejected the Fathers who have gone before us, nor have we discarded or amended the great doctrines of the church which have carried the Body of Christ from New Testament times until now. Stated in short form, g2k holds passionately to “the faith once delivered.”

Our concerns are with supra-biblical or non-biblical structures and forms that hold back, prevent, that frustrate true seekers of God and of Truth. Our mission is to expose for what they are “the traditions of men” and to allow the liberty, freedom and power of an effective church to emerge – to come forth and for a new generation of followers of Jesus to “become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom [they will] shine as lights in the world.”

With all my heart and soul I believe this: We are currently living through a most critical and significant hour in earth’s history, and that the Holy Spirit of God is leading those “who have an ear” into a new dimension of revelation and glory that will catapult the Church of Jesus Christ into her true, God-ordained destiny in the earth. Any return to the status quo, and desire to hold onto the vestiges of that which God has passed by; any business-as-usual church experience will sound the death-knell to the full desire of the Spirit of God.

As surely as I know Him I am convinced that God is raising up a NEW VOICE, a NEW FACE and a NEW HEART in the earth. In 2008, Great Britain reports less than 2% church attendance. Having spent a good deal of time in Britain, I can attest to the veracity of that figure. Something is gravely wrong when the land that felt the footsteps of Spurgeon, Whitefield, Wesley, Wigglesworth and other powerfully anointed men and women of God has deteriorated into the state it currently languishes.

In America, the echoes of Azusa Street have faded into oblivion. The times of Jonathon Edwards and the Great Awakening have become merely historic and not dynamic. Dwight L. Moody, Aimee Semple McPherson, John G. Lake, Billy Sunday, Oral Roberts, all shook the land, but as someone has aptly commented, “America is overwhelmed today with dime-a-dozen preachers.” Those who seek to plumb the depths of God’s Spirit and to tap heaven’s well of wisdom must look beyond former personalities and movements for direction and understanding. What God is doing is BEYOND. What God is doing is BEYOND denominations and conventional fellowships. Where heaven is leading is BEYOND corporations, programs, preaching services, man-made agendas, strategies and designs. God told Daniel to “seal up the prophecy” because it would require a future generation to understand. That future generation has been birthed, but where are the fathers, where are the leaders, where are those with “understanding?”

Ezra chronicled the personality of “the sons of Issachar who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.” These sons understood the times, and knew what to do! That same “Issachar spirit” is being placed within a generation which has awakened to a new day of God’s anointing for the earth, and that “spirit” must be recognized and given freedom to speak.

A nucleus of fore-runners is rising in this hour. These “sons of Issachar” have understanding and those who will hear “what the Spirit says to the churches” and who will make a difference for heaven in this time must listen intently.

I sat recently in a staff meeting in a world-renowned church. As I watched the faces of the young leaders who had gathered there and I listened to the “orders of the day” being given; the drone of the minutiae of running a huge enterprise we call “mega-church,” my heart ached and I wanted to just get up and shout to them,

“This is NOT “that!” This activity does not bear the imprint of the Holy Ghost of Acts 2. This programmed “service” does not have the unction of a church that “turned the world upside down!” Get Up! Get Moving! You can change your nation! Get up! Get full of God! Get His Power and His Resource and His Word and His Wisdom and His Enablement and abandon these man-engendered, man-enabled systems and storm the nations with His love and grace and mercy!!!!!!!!!!”

I love the men and women God has raised up in past generations. God uniquely placed and used them for their hour. I love and respect the men and women God raised up in the most recent past generation. But I wonder, “Could it be that God intends to use the former generation to provide strength and stability to the church, while an entirely new generation rises up with a completely different and new concept of changing the earth? The church of Jesus will never vanish away so long as the Holy Spirit remains in the earth; but the expression of His church is surely in the midst of tremendous transition. Old systems are indisputably falling away, cleaving away like a disused shell to reveal an inner vitality of the Body of life in God. An old wineskin, unable to contain New Wine is rotting before us, and a New Wineskin, capable of containing New Wine is about to appear.

I believe something significant is contained in Darlene Zscech’s song, “Touching Heaven, Changing Earth.” We must place greater concern on “touching heaven” if we are to “change earth.” Where we have spent inordinate sums of money and time and energy with our buildings and carpets and music and preaching programs, we must place our resources on “touching heaven” because if we can touch heaven, if we can see heaven, if we can hear heaven, if we can understand what the Spirit is saying to us, to our generation, to our hearts, we will witness a changed earth. The focus has been on doing “things.” Our energies have been consumed with developing programs, producing strategies, and doing things the way they always have been done because, our logic tells us, “if they worked for the church of the 1960’s and 1990’s, these things should work for us.” But to follow a former generation’s example without hearing the current whisper of the Spirit will cause us to miss what God is doing in our midst.

If somehow we can shift our concerns from the next popular ministry emphasis or what is happening in this geographical location or that arena to an emphasis on heaven, to an emphasis on worshipping the God of glory without concern for worshipping the way somebody is worshipping in America or England or Canada or Australia; if we can focus on hearing God and not hearing what a man here or a man there is saying; if we can focus on building deep, real and spiritual relationships with others in the Body of Christ, the resulting transformations in our own lives would have a powerful impact on the earth without the systems and programs and mega-construction of the conventional church!

We’ve got to touch heaven! We’ve got to become more connected with heaven than we are connected with a denomination or church or a treasured way of “doing ministry”! Until our supreme connection is with heaven, all our best attempts to change our world will fall ridiculously flat.

The emerging church – the true church of Jesus Christ cannot be as churches have been, or we will no longer possess a reason to exist. Let God lead us into the deep, into uncharted waters, into latitudes no one has explored. Let God’s Spirit and God’s Wind carry us into a destiny heaven determined before the foundations of the world were laid.

God is building something far more substantive than an organization or a building. He’s building His church. Observing the “machinery” of a great church is instructive, but let me be clear: It’s not about machinery, systems, models, imitations. It’s about touching heaven and touching one another. Let us refuse to imitate yesterday’s anointing and discover fresh unction for today.

Greg Austin

G2kemerge@aol.com




3. News Headlines


Brody File Video Exclusive: Mike Huckabee Says He's Thinking About Running For President
- 10/16/2013
In an exclusive interview with The Brody File, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says he is having discussions with advisors about running for President of the United States in 2016. If Huckabee gets in, the whole dynamic of the 2016 GOP Primary race would change.


Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness Proclaimed From Philadelphia over Recent Weekend
- 10/16/2013
Evangelist Greg Laurie shares hope around the world as more than 3,500 remote venues participated in Harvest America Sept. 28-29. America’s historic capital was once again the birthplace of liberty for thousands of individuals who responded to the Gospel message as part of the annual Harvest America Crusade, broadcast and simulcast live to more 97 nations


Ibrahim: Islam Unveiled - Today in History: The Battle of Tours
- 10/14/2013
Precisely 100 years after the death of Islam’s prophet Muhammad in 632, his Arab followers, after having conquered thousands of miles of lands from Arabia to Spain, found themselves in Gaul, modern day France. There in the year 732, one of history’s most decisive battles took place, demarcating the extent of Islam’s western conquests and ensuring the survival of the West.


Huge Massacre in North Korea’s Killing Fields
- 10/16/2013
The disappearance of at least some 20,000 prisoners of conscience from North Korea's Camp 22-a massive concentration camp-is a huge massacre of an already brutalized population. The camp was geographically larger than Los Angeles. Satellite photographs indicate that guard posts, interrogation and detention facilities at the camp had been razed last year.


'Allah' exclusive to Muslims
- 10/16/2013
A Malaysian court ruled that the word Allah can only be used by Muslims to refer to God, overturning a 2009 lower court ruling. "In 2009, there was a court case. It wass ruled that it was okay for Christians to use the word ‘Allah.'" The upper court was made up of Islamic judges. "Monday, they issued their ruling that you cannot use the word ‘Allah' unless you are a Muslim.


Parents Protest National Common Core Standards
- 10/16/2013
At least 20 states are questioning a new set of national education standards known as the Common Core. Critics contend that the Common Core strips away local control and was poorly designed, pointing to early failure in Kentucky and New York. The results were disastrous. In New York, less than one-third of the students in 3rd through 8th grades passed in English and math.


Million Vet March on the Memorials: About Honoring Vets, Not Politics
- 10/14/2013
We feel disheartened that some hijacked the story for political gain. The core principle was and remains about all Americans honoring Veterans in a peaceful and apolitical manner. Our love for and our dedication to remains with Veterans, regardless of party affiliation or political leanings. Their "Million Vet March" Sunday was NOT affiliated with any political group.


Redoubt: Northwest a Haven for Dismayed Americans
- 10/14/2013
"redoubt" means a "fortress" or a "safe, protected place" American Christians are so dismayed with direction of the country that they're looking for a safe place. Alarm over the future of America can be seen daily in the cable news. The loss of privacy, constitutional freedoms, and out-of-control government spending are just a few of the reasons sending shock waves.


How a genuine revival impacted Bolivia
- 10/16/2013

In 1995, Julio Ruibal, a prominent evangelist from Bolivia who lived and worked in Cali, Colombia, was martyred for his faith. In the early 1970s, after his conversion in Los Angeles, Julio returned to Bolivia and began to share Christ. A core group of young people came to the Lord and started gathering in homes, conversions began to multiply - more than 5,000. ...


News From British Isles, Ireland, Europe and Worldwide
- 10/17/2013
India: The Lazarus factor - Belfast cathedral to host Day of Prayer for Syria - Shining a light on corruption - Parliament condemns violence against Christians - Child brides - Syria: The continual danger of kidnappings - India: Major disaster as cyclone strikes - Vietnam: Detention of dozens of pastors and Church leaders - Another call for destruction of all churches


MORE NEWS HEADLINES


Unlimited permission to copy and post or reprint without altering text or profiteering is hereby granted subject to proper credits and inclusion of this web address: http://archive.openheaven.com . However, if an item not written by Ron McGatlin is marked Copyright, you should contact the original publisher for permission to reproduce.

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Edited by Ron McGatlin on 10/17/2013 at 11:06am
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