Winter
2009
Dear
Friends
This is the First Anniversary Issue of THE
BANNER IN--EXILE.
It
has been a full year since the Lord called upon us to throw
open the doors here of The School of The Spirit
for all of those that are a part of the Ek-klesia in the wilderness.
The School of the Spirit is a tuition free institution that
is open to whosoever will, and especially to those that have
a cry in their heart and spirit for something more in God.
The School of the Spirit is a rather informal place, where
we have no strict dress code, but rather a place where we
desire to be so clothed upon by Him.
In this a place were there are no bells for classes to begin
and end, there are no hard and fast dates where one semester
ends and another begins, and we offer no two or four year
degree programs, certificates nor any such things which are
only meaningful to men, and puff up the flesh.
In truth The School of the Spirit is taught at a student’s
individual pace, as we do not all have the same calling, likewise
our present spiritual needs do vary from person to person.
We also have different
levels of experience, experiences that have been spiritually
good and spiritually harmful to us, whether we know or understand
them to be so or not. We
also have been inundated with different levels of doctrine
and teachings, doctrine and teachings that have been true
and doctrines and teachings that have been false, whether
we know or understand them to be so or not.
When we enter into the School of the Spirit irregardless
of where we are in God or thing we are in God – all that we
have seen and heard will come under the eye of The Holy Spirit
to be scrutinized, and to be sorted out in the pure white
light of His Word and His Righteousness, which will undoubtedly
require of us times and seasons repentance and cleansing,
of our unlearning of some things, and our turning away from
other things.
Any deeper understanding of God and His written word can
not be rushed. Marathon truth seekers, and people who indulge
in flooding their beings with books, commentaries, and teaching
CD’s and many other such things as they rush to be the greatest,
or most informed, or most knowledgeable. These receive demerits
from God’s throne as Carbo-loading Knowledge puffeth
up and only compounds ones problems in repenting, cleansing,
unlearning, and turning away. These things for many indeed
become thorns that strangle and stifle the wheat the Lord
would seek to grow in you spiritually and rendering it fruitless.
Neither can we rush our developing a quality of spirit, or
our learning to hear the voice of the Lord in our personal
lives. To do such things tends towards darkness rather than
light, it lends it self towards deception, and confusion,
it is the spirit presumption, and rebellion so as to place
our will and our own desires over the Lord’s will and desires.
It is the way of Cain, the sin of Saul, and the
ought against the Lord of the Laodiceans. When we wait
at the gate of the Lord, at His door post as His servant if
we are to proceed at all through that gate, we must hang on
a nail on that door post our will, our wishes, and our wants.
For to truly become His servant His will, His wishes, and
His wants must become -- must be transformed into our will,
our wishes, our wants, our delight, our bread, and our drink
even as The Fathers became Christs.
Several spiritual errors in recent years have pervaded Fundamentalist,
Evangelical, Pentecostal and Charismatic notions of entering
into personal spirituality.
One false maxim that has been bandied about from before I
first came to the Jesus Christ in 1972 was: God seeks quality over quantity. So many men have
ascribed and pontificated the greatness
and glory of a man who prays well for 10 seconds in a day,
over the man who stumbles, and stammer steps as he prays and
seeks God for 2 or more hours a day. In many of these messages
the man who seeks struggles to pray and seek The Lord for
hours a day is openly mocked, evangelists, pastors, teachers,
declare such to be “super spiritual”, to be “religious”, or
having “a religious spirit”, to be spiritually “confused” or “unbalanced” or opening themselves to “spiritual
deception” or having “holier than thou” attitude.
By mocking such actions and speaking evil of such things
– The flock of God is made to fear their teacher and preacher
and their peers of ever involving themselves in such behavior.
On a core level this is the shepherds trampling down the grass
and muddying the waters for their flock to then feed off.
– In response to this perverse notion and perverse charges
we can bring to bear a great number of proof texts to show
how utterly false this notion, and these charges are.
Matthew 4:1-2 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the
devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights,
he was afterward an hungred. (Here Christ fasted and prayed for 40 days
and 40 nights)
Luke 6:12 And it came
to pass in those days,
(Plural meaning this was done over and over)
that He (Jesus) went out into a mountain to pray, and continued
all night in prayer to God.
John 6:15-16 When Jesus
therefore perceived that they would come and take Him by force,
to make Him a king, He departed again (As
he had done repeatedly before) into a mountain himself alone. (Where He prayed) And when
even was now come, (The
sun set and still Jesus had not returned from prayer) his disciples went down
unto the sea. (This
is where after midnight Jesus comes walking on the water)
We will cite here also In the garden where Jesus prayed and
sought God for an extended period of time, as well as His
seeking God three times to be released from His having to
die on the cross.
One must ask was Jesus being “super spiritual” was He being
“religious”, or did Jesus have “a religious spirit”,
was Jesus spiritually “confused” or “unbalanced” or opening himself up to “spiritual
deception” or having “holier than thou” attitude? – Absolutely
not! So if a man seeks to walk in Christ’s steps in prayer,
how then can these blind mockers have contempt for individuals
spending such copious amounts of time in prayer?
On what basis do they make such charges?
They speak evil on the basis of the doctrines and traditions
of men over the word of God, and over the words and commandments
of Jesus Christ.
If
Jesus being perfect before God prayed so to hear from the
Father, and to maintain His Spirituality how can we do less
being so imperfect, so unclean, and so unspiritual? How
can our seeking God for mere minutes a day, for mere minutes
over a week or for only mere minutes over a month be elevated
as the height of true spirituality in the life of a believer?
It can not. It is a false balance, and a false standard. To
such The Lord comes and finds them empty and wanting just
as the fig tree that was cursed for want of figs.
What God is seeking in our prayer is our love, our devotion,
our delight, and our so communing with Him. And by so doing
we will enter into quality of spirit.
This same God
seeks quality over quantity straw dog has been
bandied about also concerning our reading the bible. The sad
fact is that the greatest majority of church going believers
and even bible school students has never read the word of
God cover to cover even one single time. This
same overwhelming majority of church going believers and bible
school students have never read either the Old Testament,
or the New Testament cover to cover a single time either.
Throughout most of the church age the average believer has
never had a copy of a book of the bible much less a copy of
either the Old Testament or the New Testament yet for the
two hundred years the entire bible has been made available
in greater and greater numbers until today most believers
have five bibles on their house of different translations
and yet none of their bible are creased at home but rather
they have become a fashion accessory to take with them to
church to be seen of men.
How is it that here in the last days, the time of the greatest
deception, so that even the very elect might be deceived that
God has seen fit to deliver into the hands of every believer
multiple bibles, concordances, the original Greek and Hebrew
texts and lexicons? To whom much has been given, much is required.
God requires of this generation to know His word, to continually
read His word, to continually study His word, to study it,
to seek hid treasure in His word, to meditate on Christ’s
words and commandments day and night. Not so much memorizing
it at rote but rather immersing our very heart and soul in
God’s word, saturating our beings with God’s word so that
when we think, when we speak out of us shall flow a river
of life as the Spirit brings all things to our remembrance.
To the casual reader or hearer of the word of God the words
and commandments of Jesus Christ and word and commandments
of the Apostles do not appear to be founded on Scripture (The Law and The Prophets).
To the casual reader or hearer of the word of God Christ and
the Apostles may only seem to quote or refer to a few verses
in scripture here and there, but nothing could be farther
from the truth. How
is it that Christ confounded The Lawyers, The Scribes, The
Pharisees, and The priests time and again? It is because these
men who has studied and memorized The Law and The Prophets
at rote to the place they knew every jot and tittle – When Jesus taught, when Jesus spoke, when Jesus told
parables, when Jesus prophesied – Jesus words and commandments
were filled with Scripture, Jesus continually quoted passages,
quoted phrases, and cited passages. Much of this is obscured
in our quick and dirty English translations but in the Greek
New Testament and The Greek Old Testament (The Greek Septuagint)
What Christ quotes, and what Christ cites stands out like
the noon day sun. So that Christ confounded the doctrines and traditions of The Lawyers,
The Scribes, The Pharisees, and The priests time and again
enraging them and mocking their doctrines and traditions until
they wanted to kill Him. Jesus Christ and the Apostles brought
Talmudic Judaism to its knees.
God is seeking a people in this last day and hour that are
so immersed with His word, so saturated with the white light
of the Gospel that they will bring Talmudic Christianity to
its knees. God is seeking a people who delight in His word,
God is seeking a people that can commune with God and flow
in The Spirit as they read His word and meditate therein,
Beginning four years ago we entered into such a state, we
found worship, deep fellowship, and communion as God illumined
His word. The Lord desires you to find such a state as well.
Psalm 1:1-3 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of
the ungodly, nor standeth in the
way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in
the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and
night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of
water, that bringeth forth his fruit
in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever
he doeth shall prosper.
Psalm 40:7-9 Then said
I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of
me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within
my heart. I have preached righteousness in the great congregation:
lo, I have not refrained my lips,
O LORD, thou knowest.
This prayerlessness
This wordlessness is a great breach in the church of this hour,
a breach that must be cried against.
To the Klesia
the word of The Lord is this:
Isaiah 30:12-14 Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, Because
ye despise this (His) word, and
trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon: Therefore
this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling
out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant.
And He shall break it as the breaking of the potters' vessel
that is broken in pieces; He shall not spare: so that there
shall not be found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take (Provide) water
withal out of the pit. (To
the thirsty)
Jeremiah
14:17 Therefore
thou shalt say this word unto them; Let mine eyes run down
with tears night and day, and let them not cease: for the
virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach,
with a very grievous blow. (Those that sigh and cry)
To the Ek-Klesia,
the Ek-Lektos the word of The Lord
is this:
Isaiah 58:11-13 And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and (He shall) satisfy
thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like
a spring of water, whose
waters fail not. (Filled to overflowing
with prayer, worship and His word flowing out as rivers of
living water) And they that shall be of thee (The Ek-Klesia,
the Ek-Lektos) shall build the old waste places:
thou shalt raise up the foundations
of many generations; and thou
shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer
of paths to dwell in. If thou
turn away thy foot from the
Sabbath (His
rest, walking in the Spirit)from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; (His
rest, walking in the Spirit) and call the sabbath
(His rest,
walking in the Spirit) a
delight, the holy
of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, (Worship in Spirit and in truth) not doing thine own ways, (Hanging your want and will and desires on
the nail on the door post)
nor finding thine own pleasure, (Not entertainment, comedian preachers and teachers, trained singers
and dancers)
nor speaking thine own words: (No speaking the doctrine and traditions of
men)
God is describing here entering into this rest telling us
what is there:
The Holy Spirit leading and guiding His people, His people
receiving secret mana and secret drink in the time of drought, being a well
watered garden filled with springs rivers of living water
that fail not, there is the restoration of plumb line the
word of truth and the cornerstone Jesus Christ, the restoration
of what was lost over generations, the healing of the breach,
entering His rest, walking in The Spirit worship in Spirit
and in truth.
And what is not there:
Not doing our will and our ways, removal of the Great Whore
and her doctrine and traditions from the midst of His People
Translating this God is saying that His true church will
return to the wilderness and dwell in tents and be a people
like Christ and Abraham that wandered with no certain address
seeking a kingdom that is eternal,
As servants of the Lord in His School of the Spirit we seek
to offer anointed teaching, and well grounded in the word
of God messages concerning:
·
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 come to 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 that they might be able to so partake
of what is offered in this school, that they might be able
to even swim in the depths of the Spirit. That our students would earnestly reach out
to touch the Lord. That you would cry out in hunger and thirst
for Him alone – that over time our submitting ourselves to
His outer and inner workings and outer and inner dealings
that we might bring us 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. That is our moving in reality
from being a member of the Klesia to members or the Ek-Klesia
so that we might tread on the same spiritual soil that Jesus
Christ and the Apostles trod.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is December here in Fairbanks,
Alaska. Temperatures this time of year are well below
zero, dropping to thirty and forty below zero.
Life in Alaska
is a beautiful and wondrous thing this time of year. Frost
grows on every tree every bush and anything that stands above
the snow level, making all appear to have dense white fur
on it.
We are fast approaching the shortest day of the year when
the sun will be over the horizon for about two hours. In the
morning before the sun rises the snow is a deep purple, as
the sun come closer to the horizon the snow turns a bright
pink and then once the sun comes up the snow that has been
frozen solid in subzero temperatures glistens like it is made
up of gems as minute ice crystals have formed all over the
surface and as the sun moves across the sky the crystals twinkle
in the light.
We also have something local that is called frozen fog. In
the day it is a dense fog bank that blankets the Tanana Valley,
If one were off to the side on a hill one would see that the
this band of fog is only two the three stories in height hovering
just a foot or two above
the ground. At night
frozen fog is amazing stuff as the street lights and building
lights that point down are reflected straight up into the
sky like huge spotlights by the ice crystals floating in the
air below them so the lights of the streets and building look
like part of some grand Hollywood
set.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recently
someone who we do not know felt inspired by The Lord to send
us a few messages one of which was an excellent message preached
by Rick Vargas.
Rick and I attended Pinecrest in the same class 1976-1978. In those days Rick was known for his prophetic
words. Many times in those days Rick (Who was tender hearted
to The Lord) would openly weep when the Song How Abundant
Is His Love would be sung in chapel. It took me a week to
transcribe and edit Rick’s taped message but I feel in the
Lord it was well worth it.
When Rick recalled Brother Paul Sexton coming to him
in the hall next to the Print shop’s darkroom what he did
not know is that I stood at the end of the hall and watched
Paul Sexton approach him that day, I had tried to flag down
Brother Sexton myself but he did not hear me and rounded the
corner from Wade Taylor’s office and down that hallway, so
just happened to end up being a witness of that small event
in Rick’s life.
I am thrilled and joyous to hear and see in this message
how The Lord has so moved upon Rick’s life, and the depth
to which he has grown over the last thirty years, though we
might well never meet in this world, I am greatly encouraged
by what he is teaching and preaching where God has placed
him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We would encourage those
that have banner issues that we have not posted to scan them
and send them to our web address:
mailbox@ekklesiainthewilderness.com
-or-
rich1958@gci.net
We will also make available our mail address for
the first time to those who would desire to contact us, as
we see that at this time The Lord would have us to make this
available to His people.
Richard Schurz
2049 Lakeview Terrace
Fairbanks,
Alaska 99701
May The Lord Bless You Richly,
Richard
