FIRST MEETING WITH THE HOLY
They say a new convert is the most radical of the group
and I would add a teenage new convert is the most radical of all. Looking back at my teenage years I must be
proof of that and I bet I was a real pain in the neck. Nothing new there I hear you say. "You still are".
The Salvation Army at time was most evangelical of the evangelical of
churches. Open Air meetings, two on a Sunday, often one or even two on a Saturday if they had say a
visiting band. Going
into the pubs to sell the War Cry’s” every Friday and Saturday evening and in
December going round the streets,
standing on the market squares playing carols. Yet that wasn't enough for the newly
converted teenager. There must be more. Funny how I still haven’t “grown up” I am
still saying “Is that it. Is that all
there is to church” But in fairness to me, most churches now only have one meeting on a Sunday morning and no outreach. To though continue. Despite all the evangelical activity there were not hundreds of people rushing
into the church, even the ones and twos
seem few and far between. Yet when I
read the bible, especial Acts there were converts almost every other day,
sometimes even hundreds or more when like Peter, the early disciples preached Acts 2 v 41 “Those who accepted his message
were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.” Even in the early days of the Salvation
Army similar stories could be told.
There was at one time so many converts that the pub landlords and
brewery owners stirred up riots and paid gangs to attack the open air meetings and even the indoor meetings as so many people became teetotal and pubs losing so much money
they were going out of business. So
what had changed. What was different
from those early days of the church, the
early days of the Salvation Army and now.
God had not changed. I am told
over and over again that God is the same today as yesterday and He will never
change. But He has or has He? If He had not changed then we must have or else something is missing. Something we don’t
have to day which the disciples had.
The Holy Spirit? Or as people would
say, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The
Salvation Army in the sixties were totally against baptism of the Holy Spirit and I was told
over and over again if I wanted to be pursue that line then the
Salvation Army was not the church for me and I should join the Pentecostal
church. Strange I am still being told that
today. Not necessarily about being
baptised in the Holy Spirit, the power and
the gifts He brings (Gifts of the Holy
Spirit) or from the Salvation Army but it seems from the churches I try and
join. Like for instance the church I
was asked only a couple of weeks ago not to attend
again. That I should go and find
another church where I would be more happier for I kept asking “Is this
it. Is this all there is to church”
and the email that prompted the summons to meet the elders started with:-
“Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." Matt 9 v 37. This is the driving verse that
makes me tick and such a pain for the leaders of any church which I would
belong to. I see out there in the world great need
which only Christ can meet and my constant prayer is that He sends out the
workers. The question of course is what is the
definition of “harvest” Is it as evangelists see it outreach
and making Christians Or hurting souls whose lives are in a
mess which only Jesus can put right and in the process may become
Christians. I believe it is both although I would major
on the needs which scream out for the church to be
meeting. The problem though is, I see
the great needs out there and I want to run out into the field and as the old
song says “Rescue the perishing care for the dying” whilst the
leaders want to walk or even dawdle.”
But I digress. But the more I studied the history of the
Salvation Army the more I read about how they went out in the power of the Holy
Spirit. Likewise the story of the
early church was of how people were being baptised by the Holy Spirit and so it
seemed what was missing from the church was the power of the Holy Spirit. Somehow with the passage of time the church
decides this was
only for the birth pangs of a new church and not needed when the church becomes
established and “respectable” but the
more I studied the bible and the early days of the Salvation Army, the more I
began to disagree with the leadership of the day and started to seek the
baptism of the Holy Spirit
But before I go
on there is another story running in parallel with these early encounters of a
spiritual kind.
No comments:
Post a Comment