Dear Friends

This is the First Issue of THE BANNER IN--EXILE.

Rather than meeting in a building made with hands, we are now the Ek-klesia in the wilderness, or to use another term; we are in The School of the Spirit.

The School of the Spirit is a little more informal, we have no strict dress code, we have no bells for classes to begin and end, we offer no tests, we demand no memorization, we have no two or four year program, we offer no degrees, certificates, or pieces of paper that are only meaningful to men.

Instead what we seek to offer here is:

·        A deeper more satisfying personal relationship with Jesus Christ and the Father.

·        We seek to teach how we might not just see the acts of the Lord, as wonderful as His manifestations are, but that we might know His Ways.

·        We seek to teach how to cultivate a prayer life.

·        We seek to teach how to wait upon the Lord.

·        We seek to teach how to become aware of, as well as a partaker of the Manifest Presence of God.

·        We seek to teach from out of one’s personal relationship, how to hear the voice of the Lord.

·        We seek to teach from out of the basis of this relationship and hearing the voice of the Lord, spiritual discernment. To discern the voice of the Lord and the voice of the hireling. We desire to teach on God verifying the word that proceedeth when He speaks with the witness of the Spirit, the witness of the Word of God, and the possibly of God providing some other independent means of bearing witnessing, to what He is speaking to you, and over your life.

·        We seek from the basis of the personal relationship and abiding in His presence, how to so abide as you read, study, and meditate upon the Word of God.

·        We seek to teach our students some semblance of Greek and Hebrew so that they may, with some level of skill, be able to go to the original manuscripts in both Greek and Hebrew and be able to look up individual words, and thus learn an appreciation for the original manuscripts above the quick and dirty Bible translations we use and put our whole reliance on.

·        We seek that from this basis of personal relationship, and abiding in His Presence that one might hear, be led, and guided by the Spirit.

·        We seek that on this basis of being so immersed in God that one would begin to function in the Spirit, and walk in the Spirit as a unique individual with unique gifts and unique operations, so that you could be all you could be in Jesus Christ rather than lusting for someone else’s mantle of ministry.

We earnestly desire that we might instill within all our students the humility of Jesus Christ, the Agape of God, the Agape of Jesus Christ, and to be able to so partake of it and to even swim in it in the Spirit

We earnestly desire that as our students reach out to touch the Lord, and cry out in hunger and thirst for Him alone – that over time and submitting ourselves to His outer and inner workings and outer and inner dealings that we might come to the place that our flesh shall indeed become mortified, that our heart of stone will become a heart of flesh, and that indeed we shall become, according to the Words of Jesus Christ, CONVERTED -  Moving in reality from being a member of the Klesia to the Ek-Klesia so that we might tread on the same spiritual soil that Jesus Christ and the Apostles trod.

Many have wondered why things are different than what we read in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. Why are our prophets so different than what we read of in the Bible? Why do those who make themselves out to be Apostles – not have the signs of the Apostle?  Why do our spiritual gifts seem so flat as opposed to what is written in scripture?

In truth, the greatest majority of the ministry can not answer any of these questions.  Instead they will divert the question by jumping into something that they do teach on, or offer some mealy-mouth answers that amount to nothing.

The truth is that the first rule of being a preacher or teacher according to the Apostle John is: That which our eyes have seen that which our ears have heard that which our hands have handled concerning the word of life (In other words that these have first seen the Lord, have heard the voice of the Lord and touched, felt, and experienced the manifest presence of God.) That speak we unto you.

The crisis in the Church of this hour is that there are but a few that have this kind of experiential knowledge of Christ.  Instead, the ministry of this hour is primarily ruled by two things - those with highly speculative and theoretical teaching, and those who copy and paste jobs of other men’s teachings, other men’s doctrines, other men’s ministries, other men’s mantles who teach the Talmudic doctrines and traditions of men.

The design of these ministries is to keep you bottled up, and to keep you from getting anywhere spiritually in God, thus wasting your entire spiritual life, ever seeking, but never coming into any clear spiritual experience.  You then become more and more entangled in the endless doctrines and traditions of men that by design, lead no where.

Jesus declared, straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, and FEW there be that find it, but broad is the way to destruction.

When we look out at the Klesia during this hour, all are saved; all are filled with the spirit world-wide.  This amounts to millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions that are so. Does this sound like straight is the gate (It requires discipline and fortitude and a singleness of eye to pierce ones self through this gate) Narrow is the way (In another passage the name of this way is called the highway of holiness – in other words this way is filled with repentance, deep cleansing, confessions to God and men of one’s sins and our falling upon the Rock) And few there be that find it (Either they look a little and give up and decide the status quo of the man is the way things are supposed to be, or when they come on that highway and the sun rises with God’s dealings and workings, they faint and wither for they have no depth of roots in Christ.  Or, there are those that seek to walk as close to the edge of the road along the weeds and thorns until the life of Christ is snuffed out of them.

We would declare unto you that the Klesia is today the largest single mission field in the world with almost Three Billion Christians that have never heard the Gospel of the Kingdom.

The end time people of God must first enter into the kind of relationship with Christ that the apostle John spoke of before they can begin to speak unto others with some effect.

Is it not written: They that Do Know their God shall wax strong and do exploits?