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So they said, "Let us rise up and build,"
then they set their hands to this good work.
Nehemiah 2:18
This is where life becomes very joyful and meaningful, and difficult and full of suffering, all at once. Beloved Brother or Sister, if you would like to join me in the work, I first have some difficult Words from our Lord Jesus to quote to you, lest you begin a work which you are not, in the end, willing to carry out to its full, cross-bearing completion:
"And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.' " (Matthew 8:20)
And:
"If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple." (Luke 14:26)
And also:
"Blessed are you poor...Blessed are you who hunger now...Blessed are you who weep now...Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in Heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the Prophets." (Luke 6:20-23)
And, lastly, a passage that is to be considered with great care:
When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:34-38)
Are you, then, willing to take up your part in the work, and to rebuild the wall in your own place of life? If so, I rejoice in you, and give overflowing thanksgiving to the Father in Heaven for you! At the same time, contrary to both the "Prosperity" preachers and the "Missional" preachers (who are the ones who tear down the wall, rather than build it up), I can offer you no "five step program" to rebuilding the wall. The work is God's. It belongs to Christ. Only the true carpenter's Son from Nazareth can teach you how to rebuild His wall of Historic Christian doctrine in His local church where you reside. Nevertheless, like "Evangelist's" guideposts in John Bunyan's allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, here are some guideposts for you, which may lead you along the way of the journey, so that you may know both how to start the work, and how to move it onwards--that is, as God moves it onwards in you--towards completion:
GUIDEPOST #1: Pray for awakening in our land. Fast and pray for revival in our land. I say this without a hint of any hyper-charismatic, emotionally manipulative, anti-biblical, "having a form of godliness but denying its power" (2 Timothy 3:5)-type of vision. Instead, I exhort you to pray for the fear of the LORD to fall upon God's people again, in "sinners in the hands of an angry God"-type fashion. Pray, with all boldness and perseverance (since such things come not without patient longevity in pleading prayer) for our churches to be filled, again, with heart-torn, repentant, weeping sinners, through the supernatural conviction of the Holy Spirit. Pray for the tearing down of idols, and high places, and strongholds of false doctrine, and for the grieving, mourning, and wailing of broken sinners in the churches over the abominable practices of the heathen that we have tolerated (far too long) in the churches. Pray that God, in His wrath, will remember His mercy, and bestow it upon us, and thus visit us with a true fear of Him, and a true, weeping love for Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
GUIDEPOST #2: Study Historic Christian doctrine, with your Bible in hand (testing all things according to the Scriptures). Study diligently. Watch the videos, or else listen to or read the articles, on this website. Introduce yourself to the fear of God in the writings of John Bunyan (you can read his Treatise on the Fear of God by clicking HERE, or, for an introduction to Bunyan, you can read the short book that I wrote on his life and doctrine by clicking HERE). Learn anti-abortion (abolitionist) theology by reading my Historic Christian doctrinal book on the subject, found HERE. Learn about Historic Christian modesty of dress and moral purity (including a very crucial quote by Calvin on women's head coverings) by reading my little tract on these matters, which you can find HERE (or, for free, you can read it HERE). Read the ancient texts and books written by God-fearing men of the past on the "Essential Books" list located on the ABOUT US page. Watch. Listen. Read. But most of all, keep your Bible in hand, and memorize as much Scripture as you can on your journey into Historic Christian doctrine. For, it is, in the end, a journey into Scripture, and thus into the knowledge of God--both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:1-3).
GUIDEPOST #3: Evangelize the lost. Stop hiding behind the phrase, "We don't want to be viewed as fanatic." Compromised churches do not evangelize in a manner that is God-fearing and God-centered because they are led by pastors who are cowardly, and concerned with their own status. They seek to please men, rather than God. Yet our love is for sinners who shall spend eternity somewhere, that is, in only one of two places. Henry Martyn (1781-1812) was accustomed to pray that he would be able to see "Heaven" or "Hell" written on the forehead of every single person whom he met. As it was with Noah just prior to the global flood, and as it was with Jeremiah just prior to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, so too do we, living in these last days, feel, like a fire in our bones (Jeremiah 20:9), the urgency to warn the lost of the wrath to come. The days are short. We are commissioned by God to proclaim both the Lordship of Christ Jesus and the mercy and hope of the Gospel to all who are around us, for this is what true love does.
GUIDEPOST #4: Rebuild the Christian home. This is where things get very painful. It is where the high places become exposed. Martin Luther, Richard Baxter, Matthew Henry, and a host of other Reformers and Puritans followed the ancient Church Fathers (Chrysostom speaks often on the subject) in declaring, with all confidence, that true revival never comes to the churches of God without first coming into the individual homes of Christians. We must advance the work of rebuilding, then, first in the home. All of the ways in which theological Modernism (for theological Postmodernism is merely the illegitimate child of theological Modernism) and modern Feminism have desecrated and toppled Historic Christian doctrine in the home must be undone. The Sunday afternoon professional football game must be cast out of the home, and the Bible and hymnal brought back into the home. The children themselves must be brought back home (out of the institutional schools of Modernity and into the home education of Historic Christianity, and out of the church nurseries and age-segregated church programs of Modernity and into their own fathers and mothers' care in the sanctuary). The vision of the home must not be, "A ticket to go to Yale University." Rather, the vision of the home must be God-fearing and God-centered, with the persecutions that come with such a holy vision of the home, and thus a vision both of the holiness of the Almighty as feared in the home, and of the gentle nurture and tender care of Christ, who is the great Shepherd of the home (Isaiah 40:11; Hebrews 13:20-21).
GUIDEPOST #5: Labor, while sharing with others in much suffering (for Satan shall oppose you), to bring a re-reformation to your local church, or else plant new churches. The phrase "unity in essentials, liberty in non-essentials, and charity in all things" is quickly becoming vapid and useless within American churches, for the "essentials" of Historic Christian doctrine have now become so buried and obscured by the "nuances" of Neo-Evangelicalism that the churches are, at present, unable to define the "essentials" in any substantive Historic Christian manner. To give two examples, things that are considered "essential" in Historic Christian doctrine (that is, not essential for an individual's salvation, but nevertheless essential for the life of the Church), such as (i) the six-thousand-year-old earth, or (ii) the prohibition against contraception in Christian marriage (these are matters that are "essential" for the life of the Church, as defended by the Apostles and their successors via the "Rule of Faith"), are now dubbed "non-essential" by the craftiness of the compromised churches (a craftiness bent on the deceitful "successes" of business leadership theory and Evangelical pragmatism). As such, most local churches, perhaps including your own, are in dire need of rebuilding (of re-reformation, or else, if re-reformation is deemed intolerable to the church leadership, of the necessary departure of a faithful remnant, resulting in a new, Historic Christian church plant).
And how is any of this actually possible? Without God, the whole of it is impossible. Yet with the Sovereign LORD on our side, all things are possible. It is never "by might," nor "by power...." It is, rather, always, "By My Spirit, says the LORD of Hosts."
And I am here to offer my humble, unworthy service to you. If you have questions...or...you need prayer...or...you have five to ten families (or so) that are desiring to plant a new church together, but do not know how to do it...or...you want to bring your children home, but are afraid, and confused...or...your church desires training in Historic Christian evangelism or Historic Christian doctrine and practice...then, I am willing to labor, if the Lord wills, to serve you in Christ, as an unworthy bondservant of Christ. You can contact me here:
EMAIL:
contact.nazarethhandyman@gmail.com
With Much Prayer and Suffering Love in Christ Jesus, our LORD,
Timothy Fan
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