I am a preteristic person

I am a preteristic person who believes we are living in that "age to come"; that age that was prophesied.

I believe the church is advancing as Jesus prophesied it would (although certainly not as fast we'd like to "see" it). It is hell that is trying to prevail not heaven nor the church that Jesus promised to build.

I believe it is out of those who believe in the Son who died, rose and ascended that rivers of living water will flow throughout the earth. In this age God's grace will flow to the earth through the body of the Son and not through another revelation, apparition, utterance or another coming.

I believe the millennial craze of the 19th century that birthed Jehovah's Witness, Mary Baker Eddy, the Millerites and 7th Dayism, Darbyism, Joseph Smith and many others caused an unfortunate thing to occur. It would seem that an attitude of unfaith was birthed in evangelical protestantism at that time, an attitude that continues to this day. That attitude believes that the reward for a life of faith is a sighted manifestation. "When we see Jesus as he is" has been taken to mean that faith will no longer be required in the "age to come". The net result of this subliminal but popularly held notion is that faith is an imposition on us by God and that faith is more a punishment than a gift.

I maintain that faith is the eyesight that Jesus operated by and faith will always be required to please God, Jesus' two eyesights did not conflict. Even after we see God incarnate in Jesus we have to have faith to believe in the bigness of God the Father. With so many men and women in the pews and pulpits raising invisible fists to God in anger and frustration is it any surprise we have lack in our individual lives & corporate body life.

I believe that since the evangelical church of the past 150 years has been living believing that the reward for a life of faith is a sighted manifestation, it was not a far stretch for what we now know as Azusa Street to have emerged. The preoccupation with the visible manifestation of another coming paved the way for the soul of man to create psychic phenomenon we now call the Pentecostal Revival. 

Counterfeit spirituality today is so often just good natural feminine intuition.

I have come to believe that the consumption with the visible is that old spirit of Jezebel, a feminine spirit. The feminine walks by sight and not by faith demanding God deliver more and more on our behalf. Mother earth, lady luck and old mother Hubbard take no faith to believe in, they are like the rain that falls on the just and the unjust. It is only through faith in Jesus that we begin to be Fathered and Fatherhood is faith.

I also contend that the devil and his outfit are done away with, cast into the lake of fire and are for all intents and purposes dead. We are told that a will only goes into effect when the one who made it dies. The Bible says that a certain group of men were not sons of Abraham but their father was the devil thus I believe that sin and death are flourishing in the earth today not because the devil or his demons are alive but because the unredeemed in the earth whose father was/is the devil have received their inheritance of sin and death. Sin and death are just as pernicious whether the devil is alive or not; dead is dead and sin is sin but he who has the Son has life.

It is too bad that everyone thought we needed Azusa Street to convince us that the whole gospel is for us today. I don't have to be a Pentecostal or a charismatic or any kind of millenialist to operate in every gift the Lord has for me. I live for His glory and not my pleasure. Azusa Street 2006 ought to have been abandoned in favor of an acknowledgement that the Church of Jesus Christ is being built in the earth; hell is trying to prevail but is failing. I refuse to believe that Azusa Street was any more than a Christian Psychic phenomenon.

21 August 2009