WesleyGospel Ministries

READING MATERIAL FOR PREACHERS
TO POUR THEIR HEARTS AND BRAINS OUT WITH.

Leonard Ravenhill, Revival God’s Way (Bethany House, 1986).

David Wilkerson, Set the Trumpet to Thy Mouth (World Challenge, 1985).

Dr. John R. Rice, The Last Judgment of the Unsaved Dead (Sword, 1943).

—. Hell: What the Bible Says About It (Sword, 1942).

Jonathan Edwards, Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God (Sword, 1985).

John Wesley, “The Great Assize.”

³ For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. ⁴ And the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey. ⁵ Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, ⁶ And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸ Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.
–Matthew 3:3-8 (KJV)–

Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot,
I will spue thee out of my mouth.
–Revelation 3:16 (KJV)–

Voy a echar el resto
Voy a echar el resto
Pa acabar con esto
Vamos a echar el resto
Voy a echar el resto
Vamos a echar el resto
Pa acabar con esto
¡Viene!
¡Trasciende!

I’m going to give it my all
I’m going to give it my all
To put an end to this
We’re going to give it our all
I’m going to give it my all
We’re going to give it our all
To put an end to this
It’s coming!
It transcends!

A una dimensión diferente
Que categoría que le impone la gente ignorante
Solo por arte porque es sacada su visión
En reversa busca mucha gente que piensa diversa
Y escucha nuestra música con la mente abierta
Pa que entienda

To a different dimension
A category imposed by ignorant people
Just for art’s sake, because their vision is distorted
In reverse, it seeks out many people who think differently
And listen to our music with an open mind
So they can understand

Un mensaje que va mucho más allá
Un lenguaje, tradición, pretensión
Es una relación que se invierte
Porque una alimenta la otra
No es el de arriba el que se agota
No hay ninguno si se pierde todo esto
Simplemente es echar el resto
Ya es hora de acabar con esto
Ya es hora de acabar con esto

A message that goes far beyond
A language, a tradition, an aspiration
It’s a relationship that’s reversed
Because one feeds the other
It’s not the one on top that gets depleted
There’s nothing left if all of this is lost
It’s simply a matter of giving it your all
It’s time to put an end to this
It’s time to put an end to this

O echar el resto
O echar el resto
O echar el resto
Pa acabar con esto
Vamos a echar el resto
O echar el resto
Pa acabar con esto

Or give it our all
Or give it our all
Or give it our all
To put an end to this
Let’s give it our all
Or give it our all
To put an end to this

–Puya, “Hecho El Resto”–

—

⁶ “When there is a prophet among you,
    I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions,
    I speak to them in dreams.
⁷ But this is not true of my servant Moses;
    he is faithful in all my house.
⁸ With him I speak face to face,
    clearly and not in riddles;
    he sees the form of the Lord.
Why then were you not afraid
    to speak against my servant Moses?”
–Numbers 12:6-8 (NIV)–

 ¹ If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, ² and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” ³ you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. ⁴ It is the Lord your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. ⁵ That prophet or dreamer must be put to death for inciting rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. That prophet or dreamer tried to turn you from the way the Lord your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you.
–Deuteronomy 13:1-5 (NIV)–

—

21. To this kind of enthusiasm they are peculiarly exposed, who expect to be directed of God, either in spiritual things or in common life, in what is justly called an extraordinary manner: I mean, by visions or dreams, by strong impressions or sudden impulses on the mind. I do not deny, that God has, of old times, manifested His will in this manner; or, that He can do so now: nay, I believe He does, in some very rare instances. But how frequently do men mistake herein! How are they misled by pride, and a warm imagination, to ascribe such impulses or impressions, dreams or visions, to God, as are utterly unworthy of Him! Now this is all pure enthusiasm; all as wide of religion, as it is of truth and soberness.

22. Perhaps some may ask, “Ought we not then to inquire what is the will of God in all things? And ought not His will to be the rule of our practice?” Unquestionably it ought. But how is a sober Christian to make this inquiry? to know what is the will of God? Not by waiting for supernatural dreams; not by expecting God to reveal it in visions; not by looking for any particular impressions or sudden impulses on his mind: no; but by consulting the oracles of God. “To the law and to the testimony!” This is the general method of knowing what is “the holy and acceptable will of God.”

38. Beware you do not fall into the second sort of enthusiasm–fancying you have those gifts from God which you have not. Trust not in visions or dreams; in sudden impressions, or strong impulses of any kind. Remember, it is not by these you are to know what is the will of God on any particular occasion, but by applying the plain Scripture rule, with the help of experience and reason, and the ordinary assistance of the Spirit of God. Do not lightly take the name of God in your mouth; do not talk of the will of God on every trifling occasion: but let your words, as well as your actions, be all tempered with reverence and godly fear.

–John Wesley, “The Nature of Enthusiasm”–

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Dr. Thomas C. Oden, John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity (Zondervan, 1994).

Dr. Harold Netland, Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God (Baker, 2022).

Oliver Davies, ed. Celtic Spirituality (Paulist Press, 1999), pp. 252-254.

Josephus, Antiquities 2.10. “While Moses was uneasy at the army’s lying idle, (for the enemies durst not come to a battel,) this accident happened; Tharbis was the daughter of the King of the Ethiopians: she happened to see Moses, as he led the army near to the walls, and fought with great courage: and admiring the subtilty of his undertakings, and believing him to be the author of the Egyptian success, when they had before despaired of recovering their liberty; and to be the occasion of the great danger the Ethiopians were in, when they had before boasted of their great achievements, she fell deeply in love with him: and upon the prevalency of that passion, sent to him the most faithful of all her servants to discourse with him upon their marriage. He thereupon accepted the offer, on condition she would procure the delivering up of the city; and gave her the assurance of an oath to take her to his wife: and that when he had once taken possession of the city he would not break his oath to her. No sooner was the agreement made, but it took effect immediately: and when Moses had cut off the Ethiopians, he gave thanks to God, and consummated his marriage, and led the Egyptians back to their own land.” This should end the debate and confusion of Bible commentaries on Numbers 12:1. Moses apparently had more than one wife during the Exodus unlike it plays out in the film The Ten Commandments. He had married Tharbis, a black woman, an Ethiopian princess, who had become attracted to Moses during his war against her father. He had married her long before the ten plagues of Egypt happened. The fact that Miriam was punished by God with leprosy, a horrific skin disease, in Numbers 12:10 suggests to me that a skin-based racial mindset was at the bottom of why she began to “talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife” (v. 1).

THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.
–Exodus 20:15 (KJV)–

THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOUR’S HOUSE, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, NOR ANY THING THAT IS THY NEIGHBOUR’S.
–Exodus 20:17 (KJV)–

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an HOUSEHOLDER, which went out early in the morning to HIRE LABOURERS INTO HIS VINEYARD. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
–Jesus Christ in Matthew 20:1-2 (KJV)–

The end justifies the means.
—Sergei Nechaev, Russian atheist, nihilist,
communist, and Bolshevik revolutionary–

—

Dr. John R. Rice, False Doctrines Answered (Sword, 1970), pp. 380-382.

Stalin: The Red Tyrant (Serge de Sampigny, 2007). This should be rated PG-13.

Irvin Wyllie, The Self-Made Man in America (The Free Press, 1954).

Richard Steele, The Religious Tradesman (Sprinkle Publications, 1989).

Larry Burkett, The Word on Finances (Moody, 1994).

—. Business By the Book (Thomas Nelson, 2006).

There’s several lessons we can learn from this man of God:

1. Although he was raised Methodist, he worked with Baptists and Open Brethren. What he called the “Gospel” was a shared vision of salvation held by both Wesleyans and Calvinists–both camps spoke to him. And so he developed a non-denominational evangelical vision for the China Inland Mission.

2. The top English missionary organizations to China all rejected him, because he wasn’t educated enough in theology and medicine; and his ideas were too “zealous” and unconventional. For example, he was the type of guy who decided to dress like the Chinese people in order to fit in with them; and so become less of a stumbling block to sharing the Gospel message. So he got rid of his Western clothing styles, because the Chinese found them distracting. The missionary organizations didn’t like him and so they rejected him entirely. They also had no interest in doing any missionary work in the interior part of China; only on the outskirts by the beaches. He felt like God had called him to the unreached people of inner China; and so what did he do about it? He just went in there without a denominational covering, without the typical affirmation sought from a board of elders at some local Southern Baptist church. He became an independent missionary when he saw that no church leaders would affirm him, support him, and ordain him with a ministerial license and church paycheck. He just went in there by himself. And then over time, God sent him ministry friends, donors, and connections.

3. Missionaries need shots or immunizations, especially against cholera and dysentery. These took the lives of his first wife and their children. Today, missionary immunizations are much more comprehensive, and almost always involve COVID-19 shots. Its foolish, very dangerous, and even life threatening to go on any foreign mission trip, whether short-term or long-term, without the right shots.

4. Last but not least, he showed that charismatic experience of the Holy Spirit is possible in our times, even if you’re not a Pentecostal or NAR person. A stripped down, undistracted life characterized by simple thought patterns, quiet devotional times, deep meditative study of the King James Bible and prayer, can lead to hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit enter your mind to give you direction, peace, and encouragement. –J.B.