Tag Archives: principles for the gathering of believers

Gospel Fellowships – Principles Book Free Kindle Version – Giveaway (coming soon)

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Saints, you can bookmark this page which will be the place where we will intially release the kindle version of the Principles Book the PDF and other versions including readable HTML will be on this site but for the first few weeks we are going to release the “kindle” version through this ministry that helps Christians connect to “christian kindle” resources. This should happen God willing sometime in June 2013! on the below page:

 

Gospel eBooks – Principles Book Free Kindle Version

http://www.gospelebooks.net/gospelfellowships/

 

We are glad to have this partnership to exclusively initially release the kindle version of “Principles For The Gathering Of Believers Under the Headship of Jesus Christ” through Gospelebooks.net   This book is being offered 100% freely. If you are new to Gospel ebooks we encourage to to follow them on social media (Facebook and Twitter) and to be alerted to other give aways and great discounts on ebooks. You can follow also GospelFellowships onFacebook and Twitter.

 

A preview from the Foreword:
The time is now. Count the cost. You will be persecuted, tested, and tried. You will be misunderstood, hated by the world, and sometimes hated even by the members of your own household. There will be tears, heartache, tribulation, suffering and pain. But, you will be living for the One who is worthy of all, and whose eternal kingdom cannot be shaken nor ever fade away. You will have the privilege of serving the King of kings and the Lord of all lords. Moreover, you will one day have the awesome indescribable experience of seeing His glorious face and hearing Him call you by name as His own. – brother Brian

 

A Preview of some chapter titles, to see all chapter titles visit here.

Principle 1 – Solely Looking to the Person of Jesus Christ
Principle 2 – Where 2 or 3 are Gathered Together
Principle 3 – God’s People Scattered in Sects
Principle 4 – God Directed Churches Needed
Principle 5 – The Book of Acts our Example
Principle 6 – Not Depending on or Needing Buildings
Principle 7 – The People of God are the Church
Principle 8 – Taking a Stand for the Testimony of the Church
Principle 9 – The Early Apostles didn’t Seek after Money
Principle 10 – Preaching the Good News
Principle 11 – Leading is Serving in Humility
etc…

Principles Book to be released very soon in free eBook formats

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Saints, thank you for your patience and prayers as many brothers and sisters have contributed and serving in so many ways to make this Principles book a reality. Though much of its contents has been and is displayed in different sermons, books and messages that many have heard. We still felt it was important to consolidate and gather together what has been evidently the Lord’s end time burden for His Bride (the Church) for believers in North America specifically but also world-wide.

We are nearing the end of the editing process and from then will be releasing the book in free eBook formats for saints to be able to download and view on their computers and ebook readers such as Amazon Kindle versions, pdf, etc. Feel free to share the word about this on your social media and blogs of this soon coming book and use any images on the Gospel Fellowships website.

Here is a short preview from the Foreword of the volume:

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From the Foreword:

The time is now. Count the cost. You will be persecuted, tested, and tried. You will be misunderstood, hated by the world, and sometimes hated even by the members of your own household. There will be tears, heartache, tribulation, suffering and pain. But, you will be living for the One who is worthy of all, and whose eternal kingdom cannot be shaken nor ever fade away. You will have the privilege of serving the King of kings and the Lord of all lords. Moreover, you will one day have the awesome indescribable experience of seeing His glorious face and hearing Him call you by name as His own. – brother Brian

 

Everyone in the Body of Christ is a Missionary!

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Saints, we need to have a revelation afresh that every single child of God in the body of Christ is a missionary to share the Good News of Jesus Christ. We must all speak for the Lord and even be committed deeply to spreading the Gospel to the Nations which starts in our own family, neighbourhood and city.

Here is a below excerpt from the soon to be published free ebook: Principles For the Gathering Of Believers under the Headship of Jesus Christ.

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According to the Chinese underground Church witnessing, evangelizing and making new disciples is the number one task of the Church. Their cry to go and make new disciples is backed up with their very lives. If they speak to the wrong person about Jesus, they face prison, torture and death. The task of sharing the Gospel is for every Christian, even if they give their life as a martyr. Chinese Christians teach us that when their seed (their life) has gone into the ground and died it will multiply and produce much more fruit.

With their blood new growth is coming. The seed, their body that died now produces 100 fold, 1000 fold or even more.

When we consider that the angels in heaven rejoice when one sinner repents we know that God’s heart is touched and He rejoices also. Modern Christians say: No, the number one task is to worship and love God. The answer: Then show how much you love and worship Him by “doing.” Witness and give joy to the Father. There are many excuses: I don’t have the gift to witness, witnessing is for the pastor and missionaries, I don’t want to upset people, I want to respect other religions, I don’t know the Bible enough, what will the people think of me, and I am not an extremist. All are lies from Satan, the world and our own sinful flesh. We don’t trust God that He will help us and empower us. Please read the promise in Acts chapter 1 verse 8: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” If you feel you cannot speak out, would you be willing to give out some tracts? We are recommending a tract called: “The Amazing Life of Jesus Christ.”

The Church needs such an equipping of a simple yet effective Gospel outreach tool such as this tract to reach the masses. Imagine gatherings of believers meeting regularly that are equipped with tract booklets so that during the week they can hand them out as the Spirit of God leads them. These tracts can be of great help for seekers to find the truth. You can add your contact information to the tract for them to contact you. As you invite them to your fellowship they will learn of Christ and become a disciple through the witness in your fellowship and the work of the Holy Spirit. We believe there is a need for a radical movement of believers who are fully engaged in evangelism during their work week no matter what vocation or work they are in. Imagine an army of believers who are constantly engaging in Gospel witness to the lost world around them! The evangelization and discipleship of the world is not an option but it is a command

from the Lord Jesus Christ. Men are ignorant of the Gospel message, they do not know the Scripture nor Christ. We must proclaim to them the Gospel and the messages of Scripture through our lives and through our mouths, so the Holy Spirit can bring men and women to repentance.

A time is coming when we will not be able to do the work of spreading the Gospel to our neighbor as easily. We must be active now! Only those believers who are awake to God will have this burden. One reason for the exceptional growth of the Church in China is this one fact: All believers in the house Church movement are considered evangelists!

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring Good News!’”

May God raise up an army of the bearers of this Good News Today!

Powerful testimonies from the Chinese underground Church

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These are excerpts from the soon to be released free Principles for the Gathering of Believers book:

Without a strong institutional and hierarchic structure some of the house Churches rely on the Holy Spirit for 100% guidance. Just like the Holy Spirit gave directions to the early Christians the house Churches also receive direct instructions from the Holy Spirit.

During the Communist Cultural Revolution Bibles were scarce and difficult to obtain. A house Church prayed and asked the Lord Jesus Christ to give them His Word. There was an elderly deaconess who was over eighty years old. She had totally fasted (abstention from food and water) and prayed for nineteen days. She became filled with the Holy Spirit and would sit in the middle of the house Church. Everyone would sit around her. Through the unction of the Holy Spirit this sister would recite Bible verses loudly and clearly, and every one would write down the words in their books. Every word is the Word of God. At the time when there were few Bibles in China God had anointed a sister with a special charismatic gift of reciting Bible verses.

God has given us the Holy Spirit not only as a comforter and guide but also as a life-changing power. Any work done in peoples’ lives, without the Holy Spirit is void of any life-changes. In Zechariah this truth is shown where it says: “So he said to me, ‘This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.’”

Yet many are denying the life-changing power of God and His Spirit: “Having a form of godliness but denying its power.”

 The Holy Spirit gives us the power to witness, as in Acts 1:8, but we must ask Him and we must surrender to Him.

Brother Enguan from the Lixin underground house Church network gives this testimony: “We were one of the most heavily-persecuted churches in all of China. The police regularly swept through our area and conducted sting operations. Every year more than one hundred leaders would be arrested. Christians in our area were not Christians for long before they were rounded up by the police. You would have one believer who had been a believer for six years and had served five and a half of those years in prison. It was not uncommon to have believers that were baby Christians only being saved for a month or more before being martyred for their faith. This was life in those days. Those were hard days.”

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Footnotes:

540 Zechariah 4:6

541 2 Timothy 3:5

542 Brother Zhu

 

Principles For The Gathering of Believers Book very soon to be released

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cover

Dear Saints, thank you for all who are praying and have been knowledgeable of this project. Many brothers and sisters have been contributing, editing and helping. And currently a few brothers have been finishing off the editing process. We are blessed and thankful to the Lord for His looking after each step. We have made many mistakes in the formation of the book but the Lord has overlooked these and allowed the volume to come out into something that we believe firmly will be a blessing to the body of Christ.

We are praying on the steps on how to release the book but most probably the book will be released first on the website as a PDF and readable pages. And then we will work to release the free ebook version in Kindle format and print on demand technology with Amazon. We are thankful to the Lord to be able to freely release this in all formats so believers can have great access to the volume.

Please also keep in prayer brothers who have a burden to translate the book into their languages. We especially have a burden to see some middle eastern countries translate this book. May the Lord Jesus Christ receive all the glory and honour for any encouragement and growth to His kingdom that occurs.

We will make official announcements on the site once the Principles Book is officially released. We are thankful also to the many brethren who have taken the time to read through the different versions of the book and give their important feedback and prayers.

 

Romans 11:36

New International Version (NIV)

36 For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.

Principles Book almost ready to be released nearing end of the editing process

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Principles Book

Saints, we are excited to announce that we are nearing the competition and release of this volume: Principles For The Gathering Of Believers Under the Headship of Jesus Christ. The Lord has multiple brethren involved and nearly 100 brothers and sisters that had a part in the book by edit, suggestion, change etc. We also have tried to quote from multiple brethren from many denominations to truly give the book a sense of being of the body of Christ and not one group or slant of truth.

Currently there is a sister editing the volume and after this is done we should be able to with small changes submit it as a free ebook to many services such as Kindle, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, etc.   We also are going to release the book on a print on demand service with Amazon at 100% cost value so you get the book literally at the cost it takes for amazon to print and ship it  to you.   We are blessed to be able to offer the book freely this way to saints world-wide.

Please continue to pray for the volume and its release. May the Lord use it not as something to be lifted up but rather something to encourage people further on the road to gathering as the body of Christ in these end-times.

Free eBook soon to be released: Principles For the Gathering of Believers Under the headship of Jesus Christ

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Principles Book

Free eBook – Principles For The Gathering Of Believers under the Headship of Jesus Christ

 

 

Dear Saints of God, we are excited to be coming much closer to the release of this free eBook for the body of Christ. We believe this book to be significant for the times we are living in and very important for believer in the West.  It is a shared burden of many brothers in the West in the body of Christ to be more prepared for coming persecution and to get back to simple obedience to the Lord as the Church.

With thousands of new mega churches and church ideas and philosophies that mix the Words of God with the world’s ways and wisdom. We need rather a fresh faith and obedience to the Book of Acts and simple Spirit-led and Spirit-filled gatherings of believers who are the Church. 

We are calling believers who are being set in the world’s wisdom to rather, renew their minds (Romans 12:2) and by faith in God’s Spirit and plan allow Him to teach and guide us into how He wants the Church. We also have much to learn from underground Churches around the world where God has sovereignly built His Church. So in the book we cover principles from the Underground churches in Iran, North Korea and China.

Please pray for the completion of this project as many brothers are helping edit and make final changes for publication.   God willing the book could be released in April or even end of March of this year.

You can visit the book page with the table of contents here: Principles Book

 

Practical Suggestion to prepare for coming persecution and suffering

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Persecution for true believers in Jesus Christ is increasing world-wide. End Times opposition of the Gospel is here and the devil knows his time is short. As it becomes more and more difficult to be a born again spirit-filled believer in the West what can we do as practical preparation?  We know that the greatest preparation for all of life’s difficulties is to abide in Jesus Christ in daily trust, relationship and prayer. 

Yet there are still some practical things we can to so these days will not come on us unawares.

These suggestions come from the soon to be released Principles free eBook:

 

We offer a few practical suggestions:

1) One to start with is to read the lives of martyrs in the Christian faith. One such book widely available is: Foxes Book of Martyrs.

2) Develop a theology of suffering from the Scriptures and don’t allow small inconveniences and pains to disturb you. The Romanian pastor who suffered much under communism gives us some good advice: “Preparation for underground work begins by studying sufferology, martyrology. The preparation for underground work is deep spiritualization. As we peel an onion in preparation for its use, so God must ‘peel’ from us what are mere words, sensations of our enjoyments in religion, in order to arrive at the reality of our faith. Jesus has told us ‘that whosoever will follow’ Him will have to ‘take up their cross,’ and He, Himself, showed how heavy this cross can be. We have to be prepared for this.”685

3) Study the Scriptures towards the theme of martyrdom especially in the Book of Revelation. Learn to practice memorization as an underground Church pastor did while in solitary confinement: “I read the Bible from memory. To memorize the Bible is very important for an underground worker.”686

May we also be bold to stand for the Name of Jesus Christ before others, and therefore not be ashamed before Him at His coming.687

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Footnotes:

685  Richard Wumbrand

686  Richard Wumbrand

687  1 John 2:28

 

God Himself calls some members of the Body of Christ to leadership

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Christian leadership is a debated topic, yet just because of abusive examples of leadership in modern evangelicalism does not mean leadership is not vitally important. This article excerpt by Zac Poonen gives a clear vision and burden so that we should seek and pray for godly leaders to be raised up in house churches and small gatherings of believers.

The true heart of a shepherd and leader will be his desire to see the maturity of the body of Christ to the full stature of Christ. And also to protect the souls of each member of the body from false teaching, the devil, sin and worldly lusts. Leaders who are used by the Lord will bear a greater account to the Lord (Hebrews 13:17).

Here is an excerpt from the Principles Book where this article will be given in full when released:

LEADERSHIP

God Himself calls some members of the Body of Christ to exercise spiritual leadership over others. One of the first things that all such leaders must recognize is that Christ is the only Head of the Body. Headship is never delegated by Christ to anyone. Individual domination in a local church (or group of churches) or in a fellowship of Christian workers, is therefore a positive violation of the Sovereign Headship of Christ.

This is why the leadership prescribed for the New Testament Church is through a body of elders (plural not singular). The elders together are to exercise spiritual authority.850 In Matthew 18:18-20, Jesus said that where two or three gathered together in His Name, He would be present in their midst giving them authority to bind and to free. The immediate context of the passage (see v. 17) seems to indicate that Christ was referring primarily (though not exclusively) to the elders of the Church (being at least two or three in  number) exercising this authority. One person by himself apparently could not exercise such authority. (Otherwise it would have been meaningless for Christ to specify “two or three”).

We are not living today under Old Testament conditions. In those days, God often appointed one man to lead His people – e.g. Moses, Joshua, David, etc., Those leaders were all types of Christ. Now that Christ has come, He alone is the Head of the people of God. And He works through corporate leadership in the Body.

In the early days of the Christian era, the Lord did give a special authority to the eleven apostles and to the Apostle Paul, over the churches, but that was because the Apostles were the foundation stones of the Church 851 and were the channels through which God gave His written Word to the Church. Such a situation does not exist today, and so it would not only be foolish but audacious for anyone to justify his authoritarian actions by reference to Paul’s action as an apostle. It is more likely that such a person may be like Diotrephes rather than like Paul.852

Diotrephes was a self-appointed `apostle’ who wanted to take the lead single-handed in the Church. He is denounced in no uncertain terms by John. Wherever a man today seeks to give single-handed leadership to God’s people, he stands in great danger of leading them back to Old Testament conditions spiritually. This must be borne in mind especially by those with strong leadership capabilities.

No doubt, God does even today, form teams of Christian workers, where a Timothy and a Titus work under a Paul. But this should only be in the initial stages of the formation of the team. As time went by, even Timothy and Titus were considered by Paul as fellow-workers of equal standing and not as junior helpers.

The divinely-ordained plan for leadership in the Body of Christ is through a group of elders (whether for a church or for a team of workers). This is a provision that God has made for the safety of the Church – to prevent any one person’s point of view becoming too dominant.

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Footnotes:

850 See Acts 14:23; 20:17; 1 Timothy 5:17; Tit. 1:5; James 5:14; 1 Peter 5:1

851 Ephesians 2:20; Revelation 21:14

852 3 John 9

 

 

Being Part of a growing movement of House Churches

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It is all true believers heart to simply be involved in God’s work, where He is powerfully working to extend His Church and spread the Good News of the Gospel. The early Church began as a network of godly home churches preaching the Good News of Christ and living godly life’s in light of the soon coming of Jesus Christ coming back again.

Gospel Fellowships burden is the same that we would be an apostolic book of Acts movement of house churches and small gatherings in any place that desire to model the Church that we find in the New Testament. Are you desiring to be involved in such a work? Consider staying tuned to regional gatherings where we will simply allow for the networking of believers. And stay tuned for the soon coming of the Principles book outlining some Principles from the book of Acts for starting a house church or small gathering in a building.

Here is an excerpt from the soon coming Principles For The Gathering of Believers book:

“The early church was a growing movement of multiplying house churches.131 God was adding to the number daily such as would be saved132 and there was a sense of many being saved through the preaching of the Gospel. Radical evangelism was not an option in the early Church but the only logical response to the great offer of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Not just a few but all the disciples133 were gripped with the burden to reach the whole known world with this message of Eternal Life. Though all efforts were made the early disciples real reliance was on the Spirit of God in their evangelism. There was a sovereign working of God’s Spirit drawing men to Himself.134 Such a working always happens when men allow God to build His Church and allow great grace to be upon them: “And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all.”135

Once God is given His rightful place in the Church and is fully reckoned and trusted, a move of His working Spirit is something that should be expected. The early Church did not try to work God down from heaven but simply waited before Him for active instructions.136

As we look to the book of Acts as our model we see great growth in just a few days of the Church. Through the first 10 chapters of the book of Acts we see continual references to the growth of the Church, adding of disciples, and the spreading of the word of God. God seemed 100% focused on making new disciples. He had just sacrificed His Son Jesus for all mankind.”

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Footnotes:

131 Acts 12:24

132 Acts 2:47

133 Acts 8:4

134 Acts 16:14

135 Acts 4:33

136 Acts 13:2-3