G19.07.90.htm

ARE TEACHINGS MORE POWERFUL
BY ONE'S PRESENCE OR BY LETTERS?

SPIRIT EFFECTIVENESS THE MAIN CRITERION.
Audience response or 'feedback' is certainly helpful to those who tailor their speeches to suit the listener. But the Word of God is of a disciplinary nature, and is not intended as an 'ear-tickling' work to suit sinners. (2 Tim 4:3). Due to a common lack of attention and recall, speeches tend to educate listeners far less than the written word. As a result, spiritual letters are easier to grasp and reason upon; allowing the reader time to meditate upon and re read the subject matter, until his spirit retains that spiritual knowledge. But listeners to a speech may be distracted from the finer points, paying more attention to the speaker's mannerisms, attire, dialect, and past behaviour.

ONE'S PRESENCE IS A DISTRACTION TO THOSE ENVIOUS AND RESENTFUL.
Although anointed by Holy Spirit, Paul The Christ's apostle to the nations found it necessary to write about complainers: "So you must not think of me as one who scares you by the letters he writes. 'His letters', so it is said, 'are weighty and powerful; but when he appears he has no presence, and as a speaker he is beneath contempt.' People who talk in that way should reckon with this: when I come, my actions will show the same man as my letters showed in my absence." (2 Cor 10:9-11 NEB). In other words, they envied and resented the apostle Paul because of his spiritual authority by Holy Spirit. Paul's letters to the congregations are legal documents.

I will now expose those who make false claims to Christian virtue because of having made many, but unauthorized, speeches. There are shocks coming. Such ones should have shown true humility instead of merely talking about it, and allowed those with Holy Spirit to teach by the leadings of that Spirit. (Rom 8:14).

Of the complainers Paul wrote: "We should not dare to class ourselves or compare ourselves with any of those who put forward their own claims. What fools they are to measure themselves by themselves, to find in themselves their own standard of comparison!" (10:12 NEB). 2 Corinthians 10:9-12 reveals that while those anointed with Holy Spirit may not necessarily have a talent for public speaking when teaching from the Word of God, the Holy Spirit from God teaches and provides understanding of His Word and when to convey it. (1 John 2:27). Effectual power comes through Holy Spirit for all obedient servants. They are a distinctly different people to those unsealed ones who teach their own biased and self-preserving notions of the meaning of the Word of God. "Stumbling blocks" such as these are well known to our Lord. (Matt 18:7).

Rebellious ones enjoy the flattering response they receive from an audience, far more than to allow the Word of God to be taught accurately by Spirit to the hearts and minds of the people. They also know that they will not receive glory from others by writing letters. (See Zeph 1:9).

As for faithful anointed sons of the heavenly "woman" of God, they were sent into a spiritual "wilderness" condition to be educated by Holy Spirit, away from further "trampling" by the domineering dispositions of apostate members of the "disgusting thing" standing in authority in a holy place without the Holy Spirit of God. (Rev 12:6) (Dan 11:30,31). Many of these apostates have received bitter knowledge in letter form from faithful anointed ones denouncing their apostasy. Digesting this Spirit knowledge has been sweet to faithful anointed ones, but soon their enemies will receive final and bitter denunciations by the Spirit of God for having ignored letters sent them by the "two witnesses" of God. (Rev 10:10,11 & 11:1-3).

19/7/90.