Episode #495 – True Christianity is Knowing Christ

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True Christianity is Knowing Christ
Episode #495
May 29, 2016

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow

(Martha) This morning John and I are meeting, because we’ve got, each have a passion in seemingly opposite directions. And I think it’s perfect, and it’s fun, because we’re going to talk about how to miss Christianity and Jesus altogether in two different ways. I’m going to start by reading this where the Lord led me to April 8th, 9th of Oswald Chambers. “The question is, have you seen Jesus?” And the scripture he says is, “After that He appeared in another form to two of them,” in Mark 16. “Being saved and seeing Jesus are not the same thing. Many people who have never seen Jesus have received and share in God’s grace. But once you have seen Him, you can never be the same. Other things may not have the appeal they did before. You should always recognize the difference between what you see Jesus to be and what He has done for you. But if you have had a vision, seeing Jesus as He really is, experiences can come and go, yet you will endure as seeing Him, who is invisible.” We are supposed to see Him. “We would see Jesus.” Now I want to read from the Amplified, John 17:3. When Jesus, His last prayer and words to the disciples are here. And He says, “And this is eternal life; (it means) to know (to perceive, recognize, become acquainted with, and understand) You, the only true and real God, and (likewise) knowing Christ, Jesus (as the) Christ (the Anointed One, the Messiah), Whom You have sent.” Everything that is true Christianity is about knowing Christ.
(J) Umhmm, umhmmm.
(Martha) Ok. Personally, with a God given vision of who He is. So that’s, we’re going to begin with the pinnacle and the point of everything. And I want to, this is a discovery of this morning. It’s just wonderful. It’s 1st Peter. I was grappling with what we’re going to talk about, and the Lord said, “Go to 1st Peter.” So I got into verse 9 of chapter 2, and it said, “We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that…” I love the ‘so thats.’ “You’re a priest, you’re a holy nation, so that…” Here’s the purpose. “You may proclaim the excellencies of Him, who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” Now, the excellencies in the Amplified are, “We are to proclaim and display the wonderful deeds and display the virtues and perfections of Him who called you out dark into the marvelous light.” We are to know Him, and by knowing Christ to reveal Him in our very being. That’s the purpose we’re made a priesthood. It’s not to know facts and peculiar things. It’s to know Him, the Person. So, I’m going to have to be very bold, because I’m very concerned about the Body of Christ, and you are too. Nee, Watchman Nee said, “The Spirit without the Word is heresy. The Word without the Spirit is legalism.” And John and I have met both kind of, so we’re going to talk about the Spirit without the Word, and the Word without the Spirit.
(J) Yeah. We’re both kind of taking it on both directions. You’re coming at the one side. I’m coming on the other side.
(Martha) It’s the big balance scale, but in the middle, the balance is to know the Word and the Lord of the Word. Well, I’ve been around this issue before. There’s an enormous move, a huge move in Christian circles, in churches of extreme experiential pursuit, instead of pursuit of the Lord. The Lord took me to Florida by myself, which I don’t do, to a conference, and I saw that’s where they were headed. It was all about these flights of fancy, these la-la-land things that didn’t bear witness at all. I know that He can pick you up and take you other places. I know He can take you to heaven, but this was the focus on those experiences as validating the one who was speaking. There was no Jesus. There was no repentance. There was no holiness call. So I left there never to return to that ministry, because… An addition, which is a strange phenomena, the music was horrible. And I left there saying, “Never, never, never.” That was many years ago. And there began a whole stream of false prophets that were focusing on these phenomenal things of shaking and barking and roaring and all of that kind of thing, which is not in the Scriptures at all. There’s no precedent for it. And I know that there are many young people, this would appeal to young people. And it appeals to the flesh. So, you know what the reason for it is, John? God’s sovereignly allowing it… If you want to live your Christianity in the flesh, you can do it. This is appeal to the flesh. And only if you don’t, if you’re a spiritual person, led of the Spirit, you will not fall for it. I was thinking about you this morning. I called you to come over, because we listened to a tape that a friend of yours wanted you to listen to, because he had doubts about it. Because I’ve been reading some of the awful things he said. They’re sheer blasphemy and heresy, and the weird necromancy things they do. I want nothing to do with it and nothing to do with anyone who has something to do with it. It is strictly lying signs and wonders. And I watched about five seconds of a film of what takes place in their meetings, and I didn’t want to see any more. It’s people going into ridiculous motions, so I’m adamantly against it and very passionately for the reality of knowing Christ. So, when we listened to that tape, you in your spirit within five minutes were against it. And I called you in to tell you that a pure heart sees God. And you live… I don’t know that I’ve ever met another man who lives out of his spirit’s response and not out of his intellect, and that’s very rare. I want it for everyone. I want us to be so strong in our spirit. I’m going to tell you how to be strong in your spirit so that immediately we register. We were at one of our first book tables many years ago in Colorado Springs, and Jacquelyn Nawrocki was with us. And we went in to hear this woman speaker, who was shouting, intimidating. And Jacquelyn said, “This is not my flock.” And I went, “This is not the Spirit.” So, I’ve left that person all these years, though flock around her.
(J) What I saw a number of years ago, because I’m a good charismatic. You know, I’ve been involved with the Toronto experience and blessing. And, you know, I used to go to the Tabernacle Church over in Melbourne, Florida and loved it. But what I’ve seen personally is that the reason why you’ll go to excess, and the reason why you’ll leave the true Spirit and go into the bizarre and the heretical is that it’s a judgment against the traditional church and the legalism. And it’s literally, that’s what I saw that it was a judgment to say, “We have something alive.” And when you’re willing to in your bitterness throw out everything of the Word to experience because of your judgment against the church that has no experience, that’s when this just goes bizarre. See, the source is bitterness. The source is a judgment. It is a judgment against..
(Martha) Uh huh.
(J) The traditional church.
(Martha) Umhmm.
(J) And so you’re saying, “I won’t be a part of that,” and then you go into this.
(Martha) To that extreme, go into the ridiculous.
(J) But see, the source in heart, if God’s always about our heart, and where our heart it… The heart is that it’s out of my judgment. It’s out of my bitterness. It’s out of my resistance. It’s out of my vow to say, “I won’t be like that.”
(Martha) Umhmm. I think too, John, it’s we are so used to living by feelings. And I know how to do this. If I feel it, if I feel something, then I know it’s God. If I feel like something is going on, then I think that it’s God. And there’s a total lack of discernment today. And what I wanted to say to you about the pure heart is; Kierkegaard said, “A pure heart is to will one thing, one person and the will of that person.” That’s all we are to want is Him. That’s all there is. Everything is for Him and everything is about Him. And if He’s not at the center, then that’s heresy. And what I heard was the absence of Christ at the center; things, experiences, all this falderal was the centrality.
(J) If feeling is your center, then it’s heresy, because Christ is always the Center, and Christ’s life and spirit brings healing.
(Martha) He is the healing. You cannot divorce healing from Him. You cannot divorce any of the gifts from Him. It’s like when He was teaching me on the priesthood, but He immediately, He let me know that there’s one Priest. If you want to be in the priesthood, you have to be in union with and submission to and in harmony with Christ, who is the Priest. Now, speaking of the priesthood, that verse I just read is about the priesthood. You’re in the priesthood, so that you can manifest the wonders of Christ in proclaiming the wonders of Christ. And one thing He took me to again this morning was, it’s in Ezekiel 44, the chapter about the priesthood. And He defined what the priests are to do. “Moreover, they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the profane and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.” You discerned that by your spirit because you don’t move by your intellect. Your intellect is subject to your spirit, and you want the will of God as you have proven in many sacrificial ways. And I heard it by the centrality of Christ. It’s a very subtle thing that Christ was not the purpose, the pinnacle, the centrality. And then He is very subtly eliminated in favor of grandiose teaching that’s diabolically clever.
(J) Because when you’re listening to it, your spirit will say, “Oh, my gosh, that’s so right on,” and you’ll have swaths of “right on,” and then there’ll be a turn that’ll be completely counter to.

True Christianity is Knowing Christ – Episode #495 – Shulamite Podcast