SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Into the Prey, Breaching the Chaos of the Church with Nick and Mary Franks. We're both here today, and we're going to have a conversation together about a video that we put up just yesterday that I was able to do some teaching about just yesterday afternoon on a day off. And before we come to that, I want to just give you a little bit of an update on the podcast for those of you particularly who may be joining more recently. This podcast has been going since I think about March of 2020, and there's over 300 episodes. I don't know how many guests. There was certainly an emphasis on guests and hosting different kinds of conversations with different people and guests in the initial year or two. But more recently, that has changed into uh, I suppose just more of a singular focus on the things that we considered most important, and actually it's a case in point for what we want to talk about today, which is that in all honesty, it's quite difficult to find people to have collaborative, if you can use that word, collaborative conversation with. And so to let you know that, as I say, all these years of doing this, the frequency of them has changed in the last few years following the disruption of our lives. And that accounts a little bit, and I'm sorry if anybody's listening to this already knows this, so forgive me and and bear with me for those who who don't, that the the natural or supernatural outworking of the a lot of the things, if not all of the things that we've talked about have resulted in our the disruption of our lives in in every conceivable way. And so there's a very practical implication of that on things like time, space. Um some of you may know that we had before before we left our home in Edinburgh, we had a regular Friday night live Bible reading, of which there are, I can't remember, maybe about 40 or 50 videos in a playlist on YouTube that you can go and watch and listen to, just literally the scripture read. It's that kind of thing that we've not been able to do because of the restriction limitation on our ongoing setup as a result of this the disruption. So that's a reflection. The reflection of that is in things like we're doing now on the amount of time that we're able to give to producing podcasts in the ways in the ways that we would want. And I think we can only conclude from all of this is that actually, I don't think the Lord probably cares about some of these things. Um, and that it what what the Lord really cares about, of course, is our heart and our mind before him. The last, very last verse of Psalm 19 for your notes. Um, may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be pleasing and acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. That is what the Lord is most important that's what's most important to him. And so as we come to discuss this now, it's just to just to give that context. That I suppose that accounts for the slight change in frequency of this podcast, but also the style and nature of it. Now, watch this space, we'll see what the Lord does in the weeks and months ahead, and we'll review things accordingly. We want to do whatever we do with with the best as unto the Lord. And um finally, if you want to support this this work podcast or the wider ministry, you can you can do that. See the links in the show notes. These podcasts aren't here to be entertaining, they're here to provide, I think, encouragement and sanity to those who are who are truly listening, and maybe we'll talk about that in a minute. We've just listened to a Lloyd Jones sermon where he emphasizes emphasises the fact that that's where our Christianity, all of our Christianity starts. And if we're not listening, if we're not silenced, if we're not flawed, then we're not in a position to receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour. You can't you can't become a Christian, a follower, lover of follower of Jesus Christ whilst issuing terms and conditions or your own perspective or points of view. It is a silencing. And in actual fact, and we'll come to this, won't we, sweet, that that's the response to the prophetic word of the Lord. It is supposed to be silencing.

unknown 4:41

T.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Austin Spark says, You see, it is possible to have the things of the Lord, the things of the Lord, in the place of the Lord himself. And that is idolatry in principle. Listen to what he says here. Had I never come up against it, never would I have believed the terrific force there is lying behind Christian institutions if your ministry touches them. They are so bound up with his things, they are not able to discriminate between his things and himself. That that terrific force that he refers to that that he would never have believed existed unless unless he had experienced that is a demonic force. It's a spiritual force that he's talking about, and the net result of that is an inability or even an unwillingness to be able to tell the difference between the things of the Lord and the Lord Himself. Allow that to sit with you as a thought, even before you listen to the rest of this podcast. Why don't you just pause it now and just think about that? The centuries-long demonically inspired process of the people of God, the covenant people of God, being, generally speaking, chronically unable to distinguish between the things of God and the Lord Himself.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

So this podcast today um is really to discuss that a bit more based on the video that Nick put up yesterday. So if you go to YouTube, you'll be able to find Nick's latest video, which is entitled Do Not Necessarily Trust Pastors and Elders. And Nick just teaches through a section in John 6 that specifically goes into this the problem that lies with church elders and church leaders who focus so much on their church, their ministry, programmes, institutions, doctrine, whatever it is, and are entirely missing what the Lord is actually saying in this period of history. And so that's what we want to talk a little bit more about today.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

How did this all begin? I mean, I we were just thinking here a minute ago about 20 um 19, when when we left the institution that Sparks is there describing as being jealously defended by demonic idolatry expressed mostly through men, I think, and some women, but mainly men and in leadership roles, pastoral eldership roles. Um four years before that, so in 2015, which is obviously 11 years ago as we're speaking, we were still ignorant. Last week I was teaching from Acts 3 about the ignorance of the of the Jews before Peter and his sermon there and his proclamation of the gospel. We were ignorant on a whole new level in 2015. I was referring to our ignorance in 2019 at the point at which we left the institution. But before that, in 2015, and let I remember just vividly a quick story. A guy who um came to visit us, friendly came and just, you know, just came for coffee or something in our home. And at the time I was working doing a I was in a contract for um, as it turned out, a Bible college in Edinburgh, doing some media work for them and that kind of thing. And this guy had was, I think an aff he had been linked to them in some way um over a number of years anyway. He'd come to visit us and we were talking about things of the church and that kind of thing. And he just mentioned in the conversation that Bill Johnson is a false, a false teacher and a false prophet. And your your reflection of that, maybe you could share something about that, I don't know. But my response to that was like, come on, mate. I was like, Bill Johnson, a false teacher, false prophet. I was like, come on, and I'm in in my mind, I remember just thinking, here we go, here we go. He's one of these guys who's just a bit legalistic, a little bit OTT, over the top. And in actual fact, he was he was that and it was a blessing to us, just in the same way that we've mentioned this this elder that I have a com I had a conversation with him last week. He is complete he was completely oblivious to the fact that this was a blessing for him. It was, I think, I think it's okay to say it was a it was a a blessing from the Lord for him. People talk about God's people thinking that they're God's gift to the world or God's gift to humanity. Well, in actual fact, that is the way God works, and that in in an actual fact is quite a crass, admittedly, quite a crass way of summarising uh prophetic ministry today and the prophets of old then, but as a god as a gift of God. And this guy that I was speaking to this week, completely oblivious to that, and then but as we were, as I was uh 10 whatever years ago, 11 years ago. So that should teach me and us that we we must be patient, we must not pull up punches like the guy that was in our house did, and he was very straight down the middle. It's like he was absolutely this guy is an absolute false teacher, whereas we had we weren't, we hadn't, we were still ignorant.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah, I vividly remember him speaking, and I remember at the time him feeling kind of quite agitated about it, like he clearly felt very strongly about this, and of course, at that time we were still in and amongst the kind of just very mainstream that in fact the church we were going to at the time was quite a student-y type church in Edinburgh, big secret sensitive type, and of course, at that time, none of the stuff about the kind of music and everything had come out, you know, everybody just happily accepted it, and I'm sure a lot of places still do, but these like Bethel is just a kind of you know, everyone was quite happy to just have it, nobody was considering or thinking about it, and yeah, as Nick's saying, it was just that initial little like a very memorable moment, think back to when he sat in our living room and and said these things, and and of course, as as God then helped us to start unpicking some of the stuff that we were facing in church and thinking about and considering, that's just been a little moment along the way that we could then look back at and think, yeah, that was a little nudge in the right direction, you know, somebody pushing us to consider something. And it's a really good reminder that often often the the moments that help us to move along as God would want us to come through a bit of discomfort or a bit of a challenge or a bit of something that maybe doesn't sit comfortably with you, but then in time may help you to really stop and think because so much of what happens is just a continuation of what's been. We're so happy to just accept all the stuff that's handed down to us, maybe with a couple of changes here and there, maybe a slightly different church or a different style or a slightly different denomination. But in whatever place we go into, we're often very happy to just pick up the things that have been given to us and just sort of shuffle them along a bit, like every other generation. And it's often something that maybe at the time feels a little bit kind of, oh, this is a bit much. But that's the very thing that often that gives you an opportunity to just pause for a minute and listen, because so often we're happy to just keep going.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Yeah, and what a perilous state we were in at that time. You know, to be clear, my response, I don't think our response certainly it uh outwardly to him, but neither it was was the way that we're describing this, these other encounters with church leaders. Because of course, this guy that we're talking about, this this recat, this memory, he wasn't a church leader. He he was, you know, he wasn't in that vested position of having invested, you know, his life into certain role or certain church. So our response wasn't in this in the way that I went into regarding the teaching yesterday, but it was still dismissive. It was still and when you when we think now, um, we're we're here in 2026, so this is back in 2015, give or take. And this and the state that we were in, as in the things that we tolerated, the things that we were unaware of, the things that we were just completely unthinking about. It's the net result of all of that is is more serious than I think even now we we're aware of. The again, Paul's final writing to the church before he died, he uses the word picture of gangrene, and the the gangrenous limb must be amputated. It's it's not something that you can kind of work through slowly. If your doctor gives you the diagnosis of gangrene, yes, this limb that looks like it could be gangrenous is actually gangrenous. You don't sleep on the decision. You don't you don't go uh off for a break and come back and say, right, well, I'll make a decision, I'll make a call on this in a few weeks. For the sake of your whole body, for the sake of your life, there and then you you agree to the the the admittedly traumatic and painful process of amputation. But for the sake of the whole anything uh anything other than that is lunacy. So so here we are now in 2026, and I don't know how many encounters I've had with per with church pastors, leaders and elders, either face to face in person as as was the case this last week, or online, you know, anonymously, like weak men who just can't even pick up the phone. And um, I've even I've even offered to go and meet men. This is how serious this is, you know, and if I'm being honest, how often indignant I am in response to their attitudes to meet them, to to actually say, well, let's let's drive a couple of hours each way, each of us, and we'll meet and we'll talk. Well, let's not do this on emails, it's pathetic, but I think I think it's a symptom of the state that people are in that there isn't a recognition of the inappropriateness of these things being online people on YouTube, you know, and just a bit of counsel on that, guys. If you are involved in kind of exchanges on some of these matters on YouTube, do do do keep that in mind that there are some things that before the Lord are inappropriate, I think, to be um to be dealt with in a certain place and in a certain way. Now, I've I've been far from perfect over the last 10 10 plus years um dealing with some of these things. So I'm not saying that from a point of view, I've I've learned what I'm saying is that it's it's important to keep the sacredness, if I can put it like that, in mind uh in terms of how we deal with these things, which again is why I wouldn't want to meet out with these people. So this week, having had an encounter face-to-face uh with an elder, what what we what we what we want you to say that would be helpful after this teaching session, which of course is straight down the barrel or the lens of a camera, you know, it's not it's not in a live setting that we we long for and desire greatly, but what what would you can't do everything in a video like on YouTube? So what could we helpfully go into now?

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Um I think the first thing that we've thought about is the difference between what the elders are defending as part of their argument, and then the the total disregard for any prophetic word that might come to them. And I think it's probably reflected in what you said at the very beginning that the word of the the Lord should make us pause and stop and consider. And I think what we've just seen over the years, and you've seen in particular with lots of different men, is this very um it's almost a scripted response that comes from from us, you know, from these kind of leaders and elders. And it's always to I think, as you said, be quite patronizing, give out certain, you know, uh you know, certain ways of speaking to kind of want to give you guidance and counsel, and and it's always to go, you just need to go to church, you just need to get stuck in, you just need to do this or that, stop being negative, try to be positive, all this type of stuff that comes back from them. And of course, it's always a defense of a position, of a place, of a structure, of a system, and the word of the Lord, if this is what he's saying, which we believe it is, that these men are completely missing God Himself, which is what you really draw out of the in the video that you went through yesterday, that it goes back to that Sparks quote that the obsession with church and the structure and everything related to it has become such an idolatry in some cases that people just completely miss, entirely miss what's going on, what the Lord is actually saying. And you know, nobody wants to hark on about COVID, but that's that was what we saw during COVID as well. It was everyone was busy talking about the church, whether it was opened or closed, and what was happening, and what we could do and what we couldn't do. And nobody nobody sat down and just asked the question how about we just come before the Lord and ask him what he's doing? Because nothing can happen without the Lord allowing it or causing it to happen. And there just seemed to be none of that happening amongst the church. And I think all of this is just evidence that we're not coming before him, we're just so determined, so determined to keep up our system and our way of doing things, that if somebody comes to you like Nick does to these men, and just presents something before them, there's just an absolute inability to stop and think about it and to engage with it sincerely. And instead, what comes out are just these almost like rote-learned phrases that come out again and again, and no real interest in having a proper discussion.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Yeah, it's it's yeah, you you're talking you're talking past each other, and it's very quickly apparent that there's actually very little point in having a conversation even face to face. Um yeah, I think that's that's what that's what strikes me just as we think about the place of as I went into yesterday, the it's it's it's the prophetic word that we're talking about now in the New Testament. Of course, I feel like this is important to labour because you may be listening to us for the first time. The prophets of old, including Jeremiah, Isaiah, and so on, were in a different office, a different time, a different dispensation. Whereas today, the church as a whole are commanded by the Apostle Paul, by the Lord God Himself, through the Apostle Paul, to eagerly desire the gifts of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, especially the gift of prophecy. And so we're talking about a gift of the Holy Spirit. We're talking about a believer, I think, who who is obeying that command to eagerly desire the gifts of the spirit, especially the gift of prophecy. So the question then is what is the gift of prophecy? And if you rely on YouTube for that answer to that question, you'll soon conclude wrongly that it's about some weird and wacky prediction about some future event only. Whereas the Lord has taught us very clearly over the last decade plus that the gift of prophecy today is primarily a sense of proximity to the heart of the Father, to the heart of the Son, to the heart of the spirit to God. It's a proximity of the heart of man and women, children of God, to their uh to their heavenly father. And that therefore what constitutes a prophetic word is not that you're predicting some future event or you're you're trying to, you know, it's actually just that, and as the scripture says in Revelation 19, 10, that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. And that's exactly what divine pathos is. Divine pathos is the chapter in body zero, the first book I wrote in 2019, when we left the institution. Divine pathos being this sense of the prophetic person or the prophet of old in the times of Israel in the Old Testament. Um, in some way and to some degree, sharing in the suffering heart of God concerning his unfaithful people, the dishonour to his name, the sufferings of Jesus Christ, Paul says, doesn't he, that we're called to share in the glory of the Lord, but also the sufferings of him. Now we've just reflected in a sermon that we listened to of MLJ, uh, referencing Gethsemane and when Jesus sweated drops of blood on the floor, such was his suffering, as he was, or before just before he was saying, Not, and yet not my will, but your will be done. So so there is the testimony of Jesus in in the most profound sense of his suffering. Hebrews, of course, refers, I think it's Hebrews 13, refers to Jesus going outside the city walls, the place of ignominy, the place of reproach and disgrace, you know, the place that's that's essentially regarded as cursed. And of course, that was the ultimate place, again, uh Calvary, the cursed tree, and so on. Now, this this is what highlights so so starkly, I think, the difference between when the prophetic word is the result of that would be a kind of stunned silence and a listening ear, rather than these kind of nonchalant conversations, either nonchalant or or lividly angry responses to the testimony of Jesus Himself. And if if that's that's if you hope you understand what I'm saying, what prophecy is and what prophecy isn't, there's much more we could and probably should say about that. But the main things are that we're all as the church, we we don't have like certain individuals who are just prophets or apostles, you know. These these are these are there's a five-fold gifting in the New Testament, so that the Lord does give these gifts for the sake of his body being built up, so it's not as though everybody isn't in there's no it's like it's not like there's no discrimination between us all. Some of us have gifts in certain areas and some of us don't. What I'm trying to say is that there isn't the same prophetic office today in the New Testament period as the as there was then. Um but that the net result, I think, when when there isn't a receiving or a recognizing of the Lord Himself, which again using the words of T. Austin Sparks, is you you're left thinking, you have to conclude either that I'm that we're deceived, that this isn't the Lord's word, and that what's come to us is not of him. And yet it's worth it's it is vital to point out at this point that what we're saying is what the Lord is saying, is is perfectly harmonious with the scripture, with Jesus being prophesied and then fulfilling, being a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, as I've just mentioned, Gethsemane and so on. So what we're saying is either not true, but and then important in brackets, but what we're saying is still harmonious with the scripture, or what these other men, which are polar opposite from us, are not from God. But you can't you can't both be hearing the Lord and speaking faithfully what the Lord is saying. You can't both be testifying to the testimony of Jesus if they're both polar opposite. So the question, therefore, is how do you process that? What is the implication of this elder as one man, one example in the last few days I met that I bumped into, in effect, it face to face and had a conversation with, and it went like this almost well, it was immediate. I smelt it a mile off. What do you do with this? What is the implication of and all of the other hundreds and thousands of men that he represents when there is a complete deafness to the testimony of Jesus Himself? What do you do with that? What do we do with that? And because it happens so regularly and with such similarity in all of these occasions, um it's a question that sits with with us long and hard, and that's why we're talking about it now. What is the implication of this man? A, not listen, not not being able to recognize the testimony of the Lord Himself, which is one of suffering as well as of peace and joy. But what is the fullest implication of it? And I think that's what we're just talking about.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

And it is it is really difficult. I think that's what you have to acknowledge is when you come to think about what the implication of that is it it is really hard for your mind to take it in. And I think as we shared that memory of 2015, and now 11 years later we're at this point, that's an important factor. Like the Lord would generally doesn't take you straight to the most difficult or most challenging thing to consider straight away. He leads you moment by moment, and that's what he's that's our experience of these things is that God nudges us this way and that and shows us things and drops it in our laps and makes us consider stuff, and slowly you're maneuvered through all of these different things, and the Lord reveals Himself through all of this by exposing all the things that are wrong, unfaithful, untrue. And of course, as that goes on, you go into areas that feel more difficult, that feel more like a challenge for your mind to consider. And I think this has felt very difficult, and for quite a long time, a few years now, we've thought about these men in particular who it just feels hard, like it seems good and it seems faithful in so many ways, and to so many people in the church it feels really faithful. So it feels almost like an impossible thing to be offering these kind of questions about it, and yet what can we do except express a sense of just real confusion as to why these men seem so unable to hear something from the Lord? They just and like you say, they just can't even seem to recognize it, which is something we've come up before against over the years, but from a kind of different context. Whereas when you're faced with with these men who've got degrees in theology and you know, are elders and you know churches that look really faithful and sound and whatever else, that feels harder to take in than it does from a kind of hyper charismatic, wishy-washy background, you know, that your mind doesn't struggle so much with that. And I think this is where I think we need to remember our own weaknesses all the time, that we're so easily led by things that look a certain way, that sound a certain way, and that essentially make us feel quite safe, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Yeah, and that's one of the two things that we have to say is that the implication of this is that we mustn't assume that uh men who appear to be legit are actually legit. This is this is again the scripture talks in the New Testament, doesn't it, about the the devil masquerading as an angel of light. That's that's a biblical New Testament principle, is that that's the way the enemy works. He conceals himself by appearing to be holy, appearing to be Christian. Um, so that that's one of the implications is that we mustn't assume that's why the title of this video yesterday was what it was. Don't necessarily assume that these men are are safe or true, or born again. Or born again. This is this is what I mean. You know, so there's there'll be a range here, there'll be some men who are in this these kind of like hardened states, but they are truly born again. It's not our job to go around saying this we think this person's born again, that person's not born again. That's not the point. The point is to say that the system as a whole functions with I think an assumption that if you're a pastor or an elder of a church, and even if your doctrine is sound, that you're therefore sound yourself, that you're therefore born again. And I think this is why the testimony of Jesus Himself should be the testimony of every Christian. There should be a sense of, you know, I just defy every leader, every Christian actually, but every leader especially, at this point, as we see the world imploding. And that's not the last five, ten years, is it? You survey you survey things over the last few centuries, and you'd have to say that there's only been one direction that's clear. Um and that if if your response, even since the 60s, when abortion was legalized in this country, you have to would you have to say that even on that one issue, why is there not more of a general distress among Christians? There shouldn't be any leaders, no, no elders, no pastors should have that kind of nonchalant attitude that I encountered this week with this guy and taking the attitude that the alpha course does, you know, it's better than nothing, or we we must be careful not to not to not to use too broad a brushstroke to put everybody in the same, you know. That's that's this is this is completely opposed to the Lord. And that's my second thought, just as we're doing this, is that to answer the question, what are the implications of uh these polar opposite positions between what we're saying and feeling and expressing and proclaiming and these other men, um, don't firstly don't assume that they're all safe, but secondly, some of them are opposed to Jesus, and there's a sp there's a subtle difference there. We're talking about the an we're talking about the spirit of antichrist, uh you know, opposed to Jesus' own testimony. And these attitudes which are carefree, laissez-faire, Amos 6.1 says, woe to those who are at ease in Zion, this ease that these men communicate by what they say and what they don't say, is antichrist. It is opposed to the to the travail and the heart-churning um self-sacrifice and servant-hearted king of the Lord. So again, you have to you and we're gonna talk in about prayer, I think, in a moment, but just that this is, I think, I think the reality of the hour that this dupes, it deceives, it it woodwinks many, and we again we're talking about this from the position of having been in that place of ignorance uh in 2015 to the point where I was a little bit dismissive of a guy saying to us that Bill Johnson was a false teacher, uh as as he is.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Um I think just the point you were mentioning there about abortion, I think um, and this will in Kim with prayer as well, that the Lord, and actually with divine pathos, that the Lord most of all wants us to engage with him on a very personal level. He wants us to be before him, not before a church leader, not before your church principally, not before all these other he wants us to be in close proximity with him. And if we do that, the things of the world will distress us.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Like and how can they not?

SPEAKER_00 36:41

If we think about abortion alone, which we don't, we don't consider it, that's the reality. The church doesn't consider it. We've and we've talked about this for years if you go back and look at podcasts, but murder, straight up murder of the most innocent members of our society happen every day, every week, and have done for years, decades now. Imagine we are the most uncivilized society that kills our own children in the womb, and yet the church is mostly silent about it. Imagine that. Think about that just for a moment, and that's just one thing. You can even imagine the blood that is being spilled in this country. And you have church leaders saying, Oh, we need to pick our battles, or you need to be a bit more joyful. That tells us everything. That tells us everything about what we know to do with the heart of God.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

Yes, the the reality that we're in with abortion, as as Mary says, as just one specific topic is sufficient, isn't it? Isn't it sufficient? Shouldn't it be shuff sufficient for the church to be silent in in the sense of the opening line of the glorious feud, the chap the introduction? Uh I'll paraphrase myself now, but I said something like we must always beware the prophetic word that doesn't begin with silence or perhaps the faint beginning of tears. We must we must always beware the prophetic word that doesn't begin with silence or the faint beginning of tears or something to that effect. In other words, if if there's all of this, not only is there not silence, there is a lot of noise. There's a lot of of the noise of the flesh, and this that I'm we're talking about specifically today, where we meet these elders who who it's just not it's a lot of fleshy noise. Our points of reference are completely skewed, and that again is the work of the enemy over centuries, uh, I think in the church particularly, to essentially normalise these things. I mean, listening to Lloyd Jones preaching in the in the 40s and 50s, and his tone, his emphases wouldn't be out of place today, and that makes me think, if anything, we're not speaking into this more strong strongly enough. We're not I'm not rebuking these men firmly enough, you know, or more of us should be speaking like this, is what I'm saying. If this was the case in the heart of one of the finest preachers this country's ever been given by the Lord, if he was speaking like this in the 1940s and 50s, which by the way was just was was probably 10-15 years before abortion was legalized. Um what does that make of us today? What does that say about us today? This is why in the session session yesterday I highlighted Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel, chapters nine, these emergency chapters where the people of God recognize something of the state that they were in, and actually that there would be a national response. There's been nothing like a national response. We're all like the Bible says in Psalm 119, we are unfeeling like fat. We're like we're unfeeling rinds of fat that have no nerves because it's just fat, and we can be poked, we can be scoured, we can be burned, and we don't feel anything because we're unfeeling. That's the way the church are. Okay, so what of this polopposite difference between the elders, etc., and the prophetic word, the testimony of Jesus, that's what we've talked about. Now let's talk to close. In therefore, what is required of his people, what is required of you and me who are hearing, who are hearing. And I'm guessing that the most people listening to us will be hearing. There'll be, you know, there'll be some there'll be some, if not large or even total agreement with what we're saying. But there's still an important question here. What is required of his people who are hearing? Um well, let me just say something on that, sweet, and then maybe you can finish and then we can pray. I I would answer that question by saying, firstly, to actually listen to those who were already trained by anguish. As we've referred to the last ten years, we can't even begin really to summarize the level of anguish that we've experienced in relational terms, in situational, circumstantial terms, in other ways that we can't go into now and wouldn't be appropriate to do to do so. But suffice to say that there is a biblical, a very clear biblical um pattern, standard where the the true disciples of the Lord are trained by anguish, not by an institution, not by a degree system, an academic system, but by a spiritual anguish. It was Jeremiah who said, Oh, oh, um, what did he say? Oh my angu oh my heart and my my heart. He expresses the anguish of his heart. I can't remember, it's near the beginning of the book. But the training of anguish is something that you should listen to. This man that I met this week should have just shut up, basically. He should have listened to what I was saying and he wasn't. Or he appeared to be, but you know, when someone's, you know, this is this is the answer to the question what is required of his people who are hearing. Now, that that's not to say that we have all the answers or that we haven't. We've had to listen. We've had to shut up, we've had to publicly repent, we've had to um uh in a in a sense absorb the kind of reproach that comes as you put put your hand to the plough and don't look back. As the Lord by his spirit has more and more revealed his jealous name to us, that that reproach has only increased. The words of David in Psalm 69 that the reproach that fell on him, again, the testimony of Jesus, has also fallen on me, said David in a mysterious way, hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus was born. There is a training of anguish that should be listened to. And I would say that the responsibility is actually mainly on those who are hearing for that. You can't expect an unsaved person, an unregenerate person to behave like a Christian. But and I would say there's a similar parallel there with those who are currently not listening. They're not in a the right standing with God. And by the way, this is what 1 Corinthians 11 19 talks about the those who are in right standing with God and those who are not. Paul's Paul's kind of outburst, I suppose, at the the Corinth church for the way that the Lord's Supper was being abused. And his point was that he had he accepted that the divisions that were apparent were in order to highlight those who are in right standing with God and those who are not. Some people are not in right standing with God who appear to be. And that comes back to the point we were talking about earlier. We both both can't be right, can we? We can't be right and this elder be right, and at the same time, and vice versa. And so, of course, what the elder will say and what the church system as a whole will say is that we're the problem, we're the troubler of Israel. And yet we're the ones that have been trained by anguish, and again, whose words are harmonious with the testimony of Jesus himself. So I would say that firstly is that it's important to listen to those who've already been trained by anguish. And for instance, if that means that you're listening to this and you're in a kind of current state of not being quite sure what to do about your circumstance, your um kind of relationship with a church or where to worship, or then you should listen to what we're saying. And in all in all respect to everybody listening, it's that there's significant documentation of that available for free just to go and listen to in podcast form or in blog form, and that's all arranged on the website on the fivebrandnotes.com website into tabs so that you can go to the writing tab and see the key things that have been put there. It's not just a random accumulation of things. I've curated the most important things that the Lord has taught us over the last 10 plus years for you to listen to and to read in the hope and prayer, the hope, the daily hope and prayer, that that's a blessing and a help to you and an encouragement to you because you're likely in a much more dangerous position than you realize, just as we were. When I think back to that account that we just started this podcast with of sitting there in our living room with coffee, and the guy came and said, just Bill Johnson's a false, a false teacher, a false prophet. And it's like, and I'm like, oh come on, mate. Really? Come on. That how that's how ignorant and dangerous our position, my position was at the time. So listen to us. It's it's and we pray daily, don't we, for others to listen to as well. We hope and pray that the Lord brings people into our lives who've maybe been walking this path for for decades longer than us. So that's the first thing. Listen to those who have already been trained by anguish. And then secondly, um is is to join two radical dots to be able to make a sim what I think is a very simple connection between two joining the dots, between your unsettled observations that there's something profoundly wrong. And this will be something that has probably been kind of wrestling and churning in your heart over years rather than weeks or months, but that you're that you also recognise you're coming to a place of recognising demands your action, demands your response. In other words, you've come to a place of you no longer can you sit in the place that you've been sitting or stand in the place that you've been standing or worshipping in the place you've been worshiping. And that the this joining of two radical dots is between two things. Firstly, point A, this, this sense, this clear, clarifying sense of something being wrong, the unfaithfulness of the church, as Mary mentioned, the silence over abortion as just one solitary example. That's the first dot. The second dot is then to helping to establish something new instead of moving into another systemic ill. By that I mean rather than being a point one and thinking there's something profoundly wrong here and thinking right, the answer to that is just to find another place to worship. No, there's something more radical. That's why I've written the book The Glorious Few, because that really does explain that in extremely precise terms. Um, and I th I so I think I think that's what's required of people. People in short, people who are hearing need to listen, and there is a difference between hearing and listening, and then secondly, be prepared to contribute the rest of your life, your energies, your resources, your time, effort, energy, whatever it is, for the rest into something else being established. And I think very simply, a home church, either in your home with the right elders and the right people to make that happen, and we don't manufacture that, we look to the Lord for that, we pray for the very last verse of Psalm 106, where that's expressed, the gathering of Lord, and it's an eschatological gathering. One of the books I'm reading at the minute is called The Message of the Psalter, which is a study of what's what the writer calls the eschatological programme in the book of Psalms. The fact that the book of Psalms as a whole is by God's design and inspiration arranged in an eschatological way, meaning that there's a pattern from the Psalm 1 to Psalm 150 that essentially reflects the eschatolog the eschatological unfolding of world global events towards the eventual coming of the Lord. And um, yeah, that that's I don't know why I was mentioning that now. I've lost my train of thought. But there's that's what I would say. I think that's what's required of his people to listen, to be quiet, to listen, to ask questions. I don't mean literally to be silent, but there should be a sense of this being stunning to people, like we've been stunned, and then to to not lurch to just thinking in an in a de-radicalised way about what the solution to that is.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

Yeah, I think the important part that we learned was needing to take the time to process what the Lord is showing you. And as we said, I don't know how many times, but you can't put a time limit on that. You can't decide that you're gonna take so many weeks to do something, you have to let the Lord lead you into the things that he wants to show you. And we are impatient, impatient, and um we don't like having to do that. That's just how we are. Our flesh doesn't want to just sit and wait and pray and think and ask him to show us the things that we need to learn. Um we want to know the time limit, we want to move on, we want to make a plan, we want to do something. And we think that we're being productive in doing that so much of the time, and actually often what the Lord wants us to do is the opposite. And he wants us to just sit before him and allow him to actually think about the things that we need to really deeply consider, and that's hard, it's really hard to do, but we must we must resist the lies that tell us just get stuck back in, just find somewhere else. Something is better than nothing, fantastic lie, best lie ever told nonsense. Something is better than nothing really actually is not the case. And so many times people have told us, and we know ourselves, that our faith has increased and changed dramatically since being out of church, the institution, the church. And yeah, harder to do, but so so necessary.

SPEAKER_01 52:48

Yeah, and I don't want to I'm not obviously disagreeing with that, but I I I think the the day and hour that we're living in demands uh urgency, and that's not to say that you we're encouraging you to rush through a period of processing, but it is it is to um to ensure that what we're emphasizing is equally the need to uh to act. Um there's an urgency uh of the of the day and hour that we're living in, and the the great need, I think, ensure of Christians whose hearts are genuinely firstly they're genuinely born again, but secondly, they're genuinely posturing themselves in the right way, which is a grace and mercy from the Lord to be have been given ears unto initial being born again and regeneration, but then it that that follows, doesn't it? That there's an ongoing sense in which you have a responsibility to listen. Um but I would I would just say that the greatest need is for Christians to simply act. You know, we can think of quite a few people who are really, really good people, um, and they don't believe wrong doctrine, they don't teach wrong doctrine, they're doing fine work, but when it comes to it, in terms of their relationship with a church that's fundamentally in a wrong place, they're not willing to act. And that's that's what I would say, um, you know, to to encourage you at listening to to be willing to act and to see that as the kind of that that's what it would have been like following Jesus along a beach at the beginning of John, where Jesus calls to him that the first his first followers, and they had to abandon their lives. And if they started to pine after that which was, whether it would be their family, their family business, or something else, you know, that they would have immediately not been worthy. They wouldn't have they would have been missing the glory of what was in even in Jewish culture that would have been regarded as a massive moment, a massive privilege, an opportunity to follow to follow a rabbi. But the fact that it was the Lord God Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth, the opposite of all these mute idols, that you know, what an opportunity and that's I think that's what I would say to you listening is that is that now that's not to be vague and say, well, we should we should just go off half-cocked and not be wise in in what we leave and well what we do in in replacing of that. And we've talked a lot about the attitude that seems to be, oh, just just start a church, just plant a church. Just and we've been guilty of that as well. We've in years back, we've had even in the last three or four years, maybe, we've had a wrong attitude about that. We've just again another form of ignorance. We can't do that. So I'm on the one hand, I'm encouraging everybody to consider the need for urgent action and to make decisions that you've been putting off for years and years and years, and don't believe the lie that it's too late. That's a lie from the enemy. But so I'm encouraging uh action, but I'm also encouraging that sense of dependence upon him as you set yourself to act. It's the recognition that only, and this is what we essentially say every day the la again, the last verse of Psalm 106, that the prayer is that he would gather us. That's why I mentioned a minute ago about the prayer that there would be others that maybe come into our lives who are 10, 15, 20, whatever years older than us and who have got wisdom in line with that. Just, you know, we're not trying to set ourselves up as the authority in all these things or the most wise. We we're we're little whippersnappers, really. Ten years ago we were struggling to believe that there would be a false teacher in the church, even though the Bible is explicitly clear about that. So I'm encouraging urgent action with a dependency on on praying daily that it would be the Lord that gathers us and you into what those forms of action would be.

SPEAKER_00 57:07

I don't think I actually have anything else to say. I think I think we've covered the things that we that we have talked about personally for a long time and and we believe, I think like Nick's saying are are not just things that are just thoughts. You know, these are seriously important things because they determine how we live our everyday lives and how we think about our everyday lives, and how we think about the future and the Lord's coming, and all these things are very intimately related, and how we respond to one thing can really affect how we respond to all of them. Um but our our heartfelt prayer is just that people can come out from under the lies, the falseness, the tradition, the the handed down nature of what the church institution has become, and that as his people, that we just choose to come before him with with all the questions and all the difficulties and all the struggles that are part of that, but just that we're able to come before him, and that as Spark says that we we want the extra measure of him, regardless of what that means for everything else, and that that will involve leaving a church and all the things related, but I guess the question always is what it comes back to is what do we desire more? What is our greatest desire? And I know that I haven't always desired that, and any sense of that is always a gift from him, but if we go to him, he will give us that gift.

SPEAKER_01 59:00

Yeah, and I'm I am conscious as we closed when we quote Sparks there for talking about having the extra measure of the Lord Himself, these are just words of one man, which, whilst in context and in their in their totality, are very helpful, and I would say some of the best words I've ever read about this specific subject, they are just the words imperfect and f and you know of man. So my mind runs to how do other people, naysayers particularly, hear that phrase of um an extra measure of the Lord himself, and my mind immediately runs to Ephesians 1.17, one of Paul's main prayers for the New Testament church as a whole, not just Ephesus, Ephesians 1.17, where he he prayed continually to the Father that the Father would give to the church the spirit, the Holy Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus, or I think as the NIV says, so that we would know Jesus better. That's what we're talking about. That's what Sparks is talking about in his quote, is that we should be through the whole of our lives growing in a in via the work of the Holy Spirit, in wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of who he who Jesus is. And again, that comes back to Revelation 19, 10. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So we're not just talking about something new, something novel, something additional to the closed canon of scripture or anything like that. What we're talking about, the extra measure of the Lord, is essentially the big biblical word, which is sanctification. Sanctification, we're becoming made, we're be we're becoming made more holy, aren't we, as we go through lives? We are, we have been made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, but we are also becoming, in that sense, we are being made more like him by the work of the Holy Spirit. So that's what we're talking about, and that's what makes these attitudes of elders and leaders and pastors in particular, in their entrenched, arrogant, unwilling to listen postures, so frankly, despicable, because it's opposed to the the s essential heartbeat of the New Testament. It's opposed again to the Christ-inspired and anointed prayer of Paul in Ephesians 1 17. So we do pray, we do pray when the music fades and all is stripped away, and I simply come longing just to be bring you a song, something that is of worth, that will touch your heart for a song in itself is not what you require. Well, those lyrics of that song, I think, didn't they come at a point of repentance in the life of a church in Watford? I can't remember, but you the desire as we come, and the desire that we have for your people as a whole is to come with that posture from Psalm 51 and Psalm 139 and Psalm 19, that the words of our mouths and the thoughts of our heart, the meditations of our heart would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and redeemer. And so I pray Paul's prayer, ancient as it is, that you gave to him for the benefit of your covenant people, that you would give to people listening and people who listen to them. And we continue to ask for your precious spirit, Holy Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus, indeed to know you better, Lord Yeshua, Messiah, Christ, the coming King. Pray, Holy Spirit of God, that you would give to your people wisdom and revelation so that we would never be opposed to you, obstinate in our own arrogance and flesh, and that rather we would listen to you, listen to your word, listen to your prophetic words that you graciously still do give to your people, the church, in and amongst the chaos. We pray for your glory, Father, and we pray ultimately, Lord Jesus, please. Father, please, would you send him again soon? And that's why we pray and cry, Maranath.