This is the month of Strange Fire. It is a conference that held at the Grace Community Church in California from October 16 – 18 2013. It was an event that focused on the charismatic nature of the evangelical church today.
It had men who have devoted and keep devoting their lives to the teaching of the word and living according to the word by the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit lead the sessions and review some of the things that have become common place in regions like Africa (though according to some, they are in the fringes) where these things are common place and all the people know to be Christianity. These men include John MacArthur, Steve Lawson, Conrad Mbewe and Phil Johnson to mention a few.
So many things were said at this conference and most of the sessions were streamed live so that over 25 Countries were represented at about 25000 individual points not to mention the number of people that were at each point.
Since it spoke about how the charismatic interpretation of the work of the holy spirit, the twitter-sphere was buzzing under the hashtag #strangefire with a lot of emotion underlining a lot of the comments particularly targeted at Pastor John MacArthur who is the Pastor of the church.
I learnt a lot of things at that conference. The most important is that Jesus preached the gospel and those that got saved did so after they heard the gospel. Also, the Apostles preached as they heard from Jesus and the people listened to them and they were saved. Therefore there is a true gospel and my prayer is to learn that true gospel and preach that true gospel as it was taught by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
In some parts of the church now, the gospel is not as it was preached by the aforementioned rather it is filled with promises of what changes God is going to effect (especially financially and elimination of challenges) in the life once one believes. The rich young ruler went to Christ with his riches and obedience but when he met Jesus and interacted with him, he realized the demand was more that adding a tag to himself and becoming spiritual.
It is natural to resist anything that calls us out on what we believe and we can respond in two ways. We can either fight back or we can try to learn what we did not understand properly. This is what has happened since the conference ended and it is still happening.
Personally, the conference was a call to action, a call to wake from the slumber of indifference and self-preservation to realize that these are very serious issues and are such that men’s lives depend on the proper handling of the word of God.
May God continue to bless all the people that give themselves to the proper use and preaching of the word.
You can find the website to the conference here and the downloadable audio files of the sessions here.
God Bless
Strange Fire
October 31, 2013 by Jide Ajayi • Issues, Life •
This is the month of Strange Fire. It is a conference that held at the Grace Community Church in California from October 16 – 18 2013. It was an event that focused on the charismatic nature of the evangelical church today.
It had men who have devoted and keep devoting their lives to the teaching of the word and living according to the word by the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit lead the sessions and review some of the things that have become common place in regions like Africa (though according to some, they are in the fringes) where these things are common place and all the people know to be Christianity. These men include John MacArthur, Steve Lawson, Conrad Mbewe and Phil Johnson to mention a few.
So many things were said at this conference and most of the sessions were streamed live so that over 25 Countries were represented at about 25000 individual points not to mention the number of people that were at each point.
Since it spoke about how the charismatic interpretation of the work of the holy spirit, the twitter-sphere was buzzing under the hashtag #strangefire with a lot of emotion underlining a lot of the comments particularly targeted at Pastor John MacArthur who is the Pastor of the church.
I learnt a lot of things at that conference. The most important is that Jesus preached the gospel and those that got saved did so after they heard the gospel. Also, the Apostles preached as they heard from Jesus and the people listened to them and they were saved. Therefore there is a true gospel and my prayer is to learn that true gospel and preach that true gospel as it was taught by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
In some parts of the church now, the gospel is not as it was preached by the aforementioned rather it is filled with promises of what changes God is going to effect (especially financially and elimination of challenges) in the life once one believes. The rich young ruler went to Christ with his riches and obedience but when he met Jesus and interacted with him, he realized the demand was more that adding a tag to himself and becoming spiritual.
It is natural to resist anything that calls us out on what we believe and we can respond in two ways. We can either fight back or we can try to learn what we did not understand properly. This is what has happened since the conference ended and it is still happening.
Personally, the conference was a call to action, a call to wake from the slumber of indifference and self-preservation to realize that these are very serious issues and are such that men’s lives depend on the proper handling of the word of God.
May God continue to bless all the people that give themselves to the proper use and preaching of the word.
You can find the website to the conference here and the downloadable audio files of the sessions here.
God Bless