The Greatest Signs Of Christ’s Ministry
Jesus Christ shook His world with “Signs And Wonders.” The New Testament Church did the same. The first and most important “Wonder” was the defeat and casting out of Unclean Spirits. The devil’s signs and wonders will be spectacular things like gold dust falling, gold filling in teeth, angel feathers, weeping Madonnas, oil on foreheads, and a long list of others. All of those kinds of showy signs are dead giveaways. When the Son of God or a great saint of God does something that is a Biblical sign, it will represent the nature of God. Compassion for a hurting person, healing in a sick body, and delivering a sin sick soul from the bondage of evil are the miracles of God. The defeat and utter casting out of demons are Biblical signs that prove the glory of our Superior God. The life and ministry of Jesus Christ revealed one defeat after another for the devil. Devils knew who He was before the Disciples knew and they feared him with desperation. Listen! “When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not… And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep” (Luke 26:28,31). Jesus had absolute mastery over every unclean spirit He encountered. When He called Lazarus back from the dead, he had already descended into upper Sheol and Satan had the keys. The moment Jesus said. “Lazarus,” the devil took the keys and turned Lazarus loose. One of the most powerful examples was the woman that was bowed over by unclean spirits of affliction. “And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity…And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?” (Luke 13:12,16). Nothing proves the Son of God’s ministry and our right to do the same as His total defeat of the devil.
Jean Hynes
Praise God for your powerful preaching of His Word! The following is from “Why Revival Tarries”
by Leonard Ravenhill. It fits in with your message quite well.
Today God is bypassing men — not because they are too ignorant, but because they are too self-sufficient. Brethren, our abilities are our handicaps, and our talents our stumbling blocks!
Elijah lived with God. He thought about the nation’s sin like God; he grieved over sin like God; he spoke against sin like God. He was all passion in his prayers and passionate in his denunciation of evil in the land. He had no smooth preaching. Passion fired his preaching, and his words were on the hearts of men as molten metal on their flesh.
Brethren, if we will do God’s work in God’s way, at God’s time, with God’s power, we shall have God’s blessing and the devil’s curses. When God opens the windows of heaven to bless us, the devil will open the doors of hell to blast us. God’s smile means the devil’s frown! Mere preachers may help anybody and hurt nobody; but prophets will stir everybody and madden somebody. The preacher may go with the crowd; the prophet goes against it. A man freed, fired, and filled with God will be branded unpatriotic because he speaks against his nation’s sins; unkind because his tongue is a two-edged sword; unbalanced because the weight of preaching opinion is against him.
Ah! brother preachers, we love the old saints, missionaries, martyrs, reformers: our Luthers, Bunyans, Wesleys, Asburys, etc. We will write their biographies, reverence their memories, frame their epitaphs, and build their monuments. We will do anything except imitate them . We cherish the last drop of their blood, but watch carefully the first drop of our own!
Oh, my ministering brethern! Much of our praying is but giving God advice. Our praying is discolored with ambition, either for ourselves or for our denomination. Perish the thought! Our goal must be God alone. It is His honor that is defiled, His blessed Son who is ignored, His laws broken, His name profaned, His book forgotten, His house made a circus of social efforts.
God’s problem today is not communism, nor yet Romanism, nor liberalism, nor modernism. God’s problem is — dead fundamentalism!.
“So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold,
I will spew you out of my mouth.” – Rev. 3:16
This generation of preachers is responsible for this generation of sinners… Sin today is both glamorized and popularized, thrown into the ear by radio, thrown into the eye by television, and splashed on popular magazine covers. Church-goers, sermon-sick and teaching-tired, leave the meeting as they entered it — visionless and passionless! Oh God, give this perishing generation ten thousand John the Baptists!
Just as Moses could not mistake the sight of the burning bush, so a nation could not mistake the sight of a burning man! God meets fire with fire. John the Baptist was a new man with a new message. As a man accused of murder hears the dread cry of the judge, “Guilty!” and pales at it, so the crowd heard John’s cry, “Repent!” until it rang down the corridors of their minds, stirred memory, bowed the conscience and brought them terror-stricken to repentance and baptism! After Pentecost, the onslaught of Peter, fresh from his fiery baptism of the Spirit, shook the crowd until as one man they cried out: “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Imagine someone telling these sin-stricken men, “Just sign a card! Attend church regularly! Pay your tithes!” No! A thousand times no! “Oh, my God! If in our cultivated unbelief and our theological twilight and our spiritual powerlessness, we have grieved and are continuing to grieve Thy Holy Spirit, then in mercy spew us out of Thy mouth! If Thou cannot do something with us and through us, then please God, do something without us! Bypass us, and take up a people who have not yet known Thee!”
[-Extracts from “Why Revival Tarries” by L. Ravenhill].
Renee
Brother Chambers said this several times in the opening comments, but it bears repeating many more times:
“The devil can do nothing that we don’t let him do.”
Father, help us. We have no strength for these battles, neither know we what to do, but our eyes are fixed ON THEE as Matthew 6:33 command us. We’re waiting on You Father. YOU are the reason why. YOU are the answer to every need and desire. And our prayers, as always are offered in the precious name of Your dear Son, our Lord Jesus Messiah, amen.
Jean, beautiful, thank you.
Jane
Thank you Brother Chambers for your insights on the true and false signs and wonders..
Is it no wonder that the False Prophets are increasing in number and popularity?
Is it possible that it is because the church is weak and seemingly powerless..
Wouldn’t Jesus have restored the tooth completely? He didn’t give the blind man glasses,
nor the crippled man a crutch, and he didn’t psychoanalysis the demoniac, but, he cast
out the devils and set him free.
And thank you Jean for the inspiring words of Ravenhill. I had only heard of him,
Your quote from his sermon inspired me to search out his video clips and what a
unbelievable man and blessing I recieved. Thank you..
His video clip on “There are no free crowns in heaven..awe inspiring..