To visit the Internet Church of Christ founded by Dr. Bob Benchoff, click here.
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Wind
--Sermon by Dr. Bob Benchoff, August 4, 2002
You shall inherit the wind. Even now, as you seek to learn more of God and his only begotten son Jesus Christ.
Public alert megaphones, on the air, wind gusts, wind power, rain, windfall profits, winds of wireless energy, tail wind, and traveling on solar winds: all of these are for the heirs of the Kingdom of God.
Life is but a vapor (James 4.14). Through repentance and baptism and receiving Christ you inherit life eternal.
The wind blows where it will according to God. So is the Spirit.
According to God, the wind drives great vehicles. According to God, the Spirit drives great people, according to their spirit.
That which is born of Spirit is spirit (John Chapter 3).
The Spirit moved on the face of the waters (Genesis 1.2).
God made a wind blow over the earth and the waters subsided (Genesis 8.1).
When they got in the boat, the wind ceased, and those in the boat worshiped Christ (Matthew 14.32 & 33).
The Holy Spirit moves over the masses of people.
Even comedians such as Bob Hope, for instance, will tell you that people respond to better jokes in waves.
It is important to comedians to get multiple waves of laughter from just one joke, and it is important to have the depth of meaning to create such affects. So people get the meaning and immediately react, then after thinking about the idea a few seconds respond to a hidden meaning under the surface, and then people consider the complexities of the more profound messages and express awe and amazement.
God's messages through the Holy Spirit to Christian followers (Christian followers, not uninvolved followers, such as news reporting) of Jesus Christ are received with immediate rejoicing and waves of celebration and glorification of God, then with immediate action to implement the new message from God, then with edification of the church, then with waves of resurgence with the edification offered to others that also works to edify the teacher, then with waves of joy with directives to those who want to help spread the word, then with celebrations for evangelical successes, then with ongoing thankful actions and prayers; these are things on the surface, and then there are deeper layers of thoughtful bliss as reasoning among people of faith love to dwell on the deeper profound meanings of God's messages and share those meanings in complex studies that reform and increasingly straighten and hone to a fine narrow pathway the core of their shared learning and that of the church as a whole; and then there are even deeper waves of beauty beyond human quantification and reasoning with qualities of grandure in the scheme of life and the cosmos and beyond that transends glee and opens life and it's purpose and meaning and is an agape of moans and groans to subtle to be heard.
The wind is yours to inherit. I also pray that God sees it fitting and rightous to give to you according to your good faith in Jesus Christ the ability to decipher the winds and the messages carried, knowing what is good and true, and that you inherit that portion.
The Bible reveals levels of gifts of the spirit and we should earnestly desire the higher gifts.
June 4, 1984, Christ's television Minister Reverend Ernest Angley of Akron, Ohio, sent me a Bible gift and wrote in it a message of thanks for partnering.
I want to tell you about this fellow. He was not a tall man, in fact a little bit short. He didn't seem strong such as Arnold Schwartznegger or Sylvester Stalone (I hope I spelled their names right).
Yet Reverend Ernest Angley had faith in Jesus Christ and built his Ministries. And the audience grew to tremendous proportions (I visited and was amazed), and became televised and international.
He had prayed to God for one of those higher gifts. Believe me, when you pray to God, you can get a lot more than you expect.
The prayers of the righteous availeth much. Ernest prayed for the gift of discernment: the ability to discern good spirits from bad spirits.
He wanted to know the truth, he wanted to be able to tell which of the various messages he heard were true.
Well, he got what he asked-for, and more; much more. God gave him the power of discernment, enough to drive a non-Christian crazy perhaps.
What he received wasn't what he expected. It was far more in that he saw what he could describe to the best of his knowledge as angels flying about and mainly hovering over certain people or groups of people.
He also saw awful spirits, a frightening reminder to keep the faith in Christ Jesus.
Reverend Angley could look out over the crowd in his church and see the people with these translucent spirits moving about; and the spirits would appear and disappear.
From his descriptions I got the impression that what he saw were rapidly changing shapes and textures of brilliance, of various sizes and shapes, often ten feet tall.
I was there and unfortunately saw nothing of the sort and believe everything he said. I can tell when a person is lying as well as the next juror. And Ernest Angley wasn't lying.
Back then I was used to the routine found at many churches: having a one hour church session and then the flock hurried out the doors to get on with their lives.
When Reverend Ernest Angley gave his sermon it lasted 4 (four) hours. And there was no one squirming in their seats. After one hour I was looking around, no one tried to [escape], for lack of a better word. After an hour and a half everyone continued to be enthralled, focused intently on the sermon and it's wonderful goodness.
After four hours Reverend Ernest Angley ended his main sermon, and without interruption started the next part of having those in need of healing and/or special prayer come forward. And with those angels flying around Reverend Ernest Angley continued doing God's work.
Exhaling, spoken or otherwise, is not the only part of doing good. Breathing-in is also important. Once when young while playing football another kid, Kenny Morton, was knocked on his back onto a small hard mound of dirt which knocked the wind out of him. I bent over him and clearly and forcefully said "Breathe."
He inhaled and got up. Afterward we breifly discussed it. I said you felt comfortable not breathing, didn't you? He was surprised and said yes.
So, discernment is not just of the exterior, but also within our minds.
Armed with this information, reader of this sermon, you should now be able to withstand great tragedy originating from without or within; through Jesus Christ. Go ahead use faith, science, and logic to fly above with Christ in your thinking of God. Use all the means at your disposal, use all of your resources.
Take care of the wind as you would take care of a fine piece of merchandise on the store shelf that you are about to purchase. Take care of your spirit, take care of others.
Ken Morton breathed-in and inherited and owned his part of the wind and it became part of him and his life.
Some people do not believe earthly matters, yet Ernest Angley went beyond and inherited his part of the wind with the discerning of spirits and the preaching of heavenly matters.
Some people do not believe in the trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and say the concept was based on paganism.
Yet I say to you there is a trinity of our heavenly Father and his only begotten Son and the Word Amen.
And furthermore I say to you in the future there will be a fourth constituent of holiness in heaven equal to each of the other three, and one with them, and yet submissive.
This fourth entity will inherit the wind because it will be comprised of those whose names are written in the book of life, and they shall be the bride of the Lamb of God.
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To visit the Internet Church of Christ founded by Dr. Bob Benchoff, click here.