5294	Forums / Main Forum / Re: Catholic Question about John 6	on: March 25, 2009, 01:02:26 PM
Quote from: billbennett on March 25, 2009, 12:44:55 PM Socrates, To your question on the nature of saving faith. The best definition of saving faith I have heard was from C.H. Spurgeon (one of my heros) and it comes from his book "All of Grace". This is a must read for serious Christians IMO, and can be found in its entirety at spurgeon.org. I will try and summarize what Spurgeon said. Saving faith has three elements. They are as follows: A knowledge of the facts of the gospel - coming to an understanding that Christ died for our sins and rose bodily from the grace. Second, believing those facts to be true. Spurgeon referred to this as assent, the believing of the facts of the gospel to be true. Lastly, saving faith involves personally trusting Christ to save you. Placing your faith in Christ and Him alone for your salvation. Read the first few chapters of "All of Grace" if you have time. Spurgeon goes into more detail, but the essentials of knowledge, assent, and trust are the key concepts. As I understand saving faith, this is faith in a person, Jesus Christ, not in the Bible. And yet, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Furthermore, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. Hope this helps. And Madonna welcome to the discussion. Maybe you can add a perspective that some of us from the Protestant tradition are missing. Bill Bill you know i love Spurgeon. I will continue to focus on the down grade. Yes.... facts are very important. The bible talks about faith by hearing.. how are they going to hear without a preacher... so that the means through which salvation is obtained ...i mean man being totally passive and God totally active ... is through preaching. A person can come to Christ without even going through a period of not being without a time in his life where he was not hearing the word through a preacher. He can simply not know any other way...salvation just happened without his knowledge of the exact time of the transaction. The event of salvation is come from an over focus of the simple gospel and the call to salvation being essential. I would much rather have a society where there is such a premium on deep doctrine that even the unsaved know of  it.
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5295	Forums / Theology Forum / Re: The Spirit of Revival	on: March 25, 2009, 12:19:12 PM
Now Gods love is always over us... in us... around us.. and unto the ends of the earth. His love is the means by which we obtain eternal life. For He has answered our prayers... because morning by morning we come and present our request before Him. So that we are always waiting on Him in a spirit of supplication. If He were to open up our lives to the eternal words of His power... He would consume us with His pleasure.This is the reason why meditation on His word is so pleasant. For it is sweeter than honey ... honey from a honey comb. It is more desirable than the most riches... more desired than any gold or silver. For those things bring a level of pleasure in this world... but Gods word leaves a lasting impression on our hearts. For His word is like a fire... it is God Himself who goes before His word.. a fire goes before Him and consumes His foes on every side. God is surrounding us with love... grace.. kindness...faithfulness.. and He not only reminds us in His word... but He displays it in how deep is the love of God in experience. How much dependence from separation of experiencing that love so that He withholds from us the feelings of convenience ..that is strong desires for fading pleasures... and He touches us with His present cause of all things moving. We are made aware of Gods power in an experience of a divine weight of glory ... that beatific disposition to see Christ... a deep desire for His face...to dwell in the absolute fellowship of Christ in the sweetness of mourning over our sins for the pleasure of falling into a deep dream... a full effervescence of the new word. We are touched with an increase of one idea... that causes us to feel less inclined to find another sordid idea that would be a dis connection from that one thing. That one desire... the over bearing feeling of joy... found with little searching... and some times overflowing so that we create a new level of existence. We are climbing the ladder of glory. We are looking down the steps at the old way of thinking. Oh the sweet aroma of His divine Rose of Sharon. May we be filled with all the power of His resurrection so that we might know the depth, and height and length of the love of God... so that we might find our lives to be all of Him... all of His speaking ... all of His moving... and all of our minds so enthralled with that beauty that we could only think a small part on the parts of our days. God has changed my worship. Now i am hearing the doctrines of Grace. Wow.... this is amazing. I have a very deep reservoir of revived listening that is going to draw me to revival. 5296  Forums / Key Life Forum / Re: How do you truly repent and walk away from a sin for good? on: March 25, 2009, 10:50:26 AM Repentance can be from the wrong motive. In other words repentance can be from a motive that is not from God the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit distributes gifts according to His will... Gods will. So that true repentance is a gift of grace and is an act of faith... and faith or believing is given by God. Faith is simply a way or a agency by which the object of that believing is apprehended. No man can exercise saving faith without a prior understanding of the object. No man is able to apprehend the object without having a renewed will... a completely different will than his natural will. Men must be given Gods will in order to believe. So that we are talking about more than just responding to a troubled conscience. There are a few principles that men naturally practice to relieve a troubled conscience. This has absolutely nothing to do with saving faith. First they focus on the trouble or the pain of the guilt. Guilt will never be the reason that true forgiveness is obtained. Just because there is a violent strike to the conscience ... or a relationship to finding relief from guilt through the process of pricking in the conscience , does not present the reason for obtaining forgiveness. Men will think that forgiveness is from a legal desire to avoid sin at all cost... and that pain of conscience is the fuel that is needed to dwell in forgiveness. But this is not from the rite motive. This is from a self motive. It is like trying to do something in order to feel forgiven. It is from a motive to have a perfect conscience void of any trouble. This motive is a charge against Gods grace. This motive has for its ends the vindication of men for the purpose of obtaining some kind of favor from men. The end is self righteousness. There is another natural way through in this legal way. That is to believe that forgiveness is obtained by some kind of practice. Some people teach that forgiveness is obtained through confession. Luther thought this as well. Luther would list all of his sins in a meticulous way and then begin confessing them one by one. In fact Luther would climb steps while confessing sins. The problem was that just as he would get to the top with his last confession... then another sin would bring him rite back where he started from.. a troubled conscience. John says if we confess our  sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins....if we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Or if we think that confession is the reason we are forgiven... then we are in for a 24 hr confession... we never meet the requirements of any law at any time. That would be charging God with contempt. We are forgiven by the work of Christ on the cross. We could never obtain the standard of goodness by our practicing confession. We could never obtain our acceptance of being rite by our practice of obedience to the law.If we judged ourselves by the standard of the law ... then we would need to judge it by Christ way of keeping the law. Other wise we would either need to lower the standard of law keeping or lower Christ worthiness of law keeping. You can take your pick... men do this all the time..its called practical atheism.  So that true repentance is coming to a place where we see our inability to do one good thing on our own. We give up the imagination that we are worthy of acceptance in repenting. True repentance is charging ourselves with not loving God like we should so that we vindicate Christ righteousness and love. True repentance is living before God as a believer would... with humility... love and thankfulness in Christ work alone. True repentance is coming to a place where we are made aware that we are forgiven in the midst of so much failure and sin. It is seeing that we are worthy of being condemned for one sin... but knowing that He loves us because He has displayed that love in His Son and we are Christ objects of love. True repentance is being brought to a place where we are aways desiring to worship Christ and love Him with all of our hearts , minds and wills. It is finding in Him all we need. True repentance is dwelling in His love and faithfulness. We live a life of repentance. Thank God its a means of grace!!!!    Reply Quote Notify 5297  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: predestination on: March 25, 2009, 10:06:47 AM Quote from: THOR on March 24, 2009, 11:46:14 AM Quote from: toadbat on March 19, 2009, 08:22:28 PM Quote from: THOR on March 19, 2009, 12:41:05 PM  The future is NOT written in stone for anyone. What a great hope!  This gives every human being the right and dignity to be saved IF they call (and they can) upon the LORD/Yeshua/Jesus. Thor, can you supply me with so much as one verse from scripture where it says anyone can call upon the name of the Lord in their own sinful state? Every verse that I have been able to find (and read exegetically) tells me the flat-out opposite: We do not have the ability to call upon Christ for our salvation in our natural state; out natural wills are at total opposites with God and His desires for us and we are engaged in all-out war with Him until He changes our hearts and calls us forth from death to life. Our state is not one of being sick in trespasses and sins, Thor; scripture makes it plain that we are altogether dead in trespasses and sins. Please also do me the favor of not isolating any verse you find from all the others which are meant to go along with it; John 3:16 is indelibly linked to every verse in both Romans and Galatians as they are to it. "Whomsoever will" does not mean "anyone can." It means simply whoever is in question in this verse (i.e. a hypothetical person). The NT references to this verse were God is addressing the sinful idolatrous Jews: Joe 2:32  And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD hath said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call. Whosoever includes the Hebrew word Kol..meaning all 'total', 'all', or 'everyone' Who calls (out to God in repentance) and places it in contrast to God calling them (through His Word via the Prophets). The Jews were indeed sinful because of their idolatry and God implores them to show their repentance by prayer and fasting (afflicting their souls) Joe 2:12  Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: Joe 2:13  And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. Joe 2:14  Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him; even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the LORD your God? If they truly repent and turn to God then God MAY relent His punishment (it's worth a shot because destruction is coming anyway) God had been down this road many times with Israel and wants to break the cycle of sin, falling away, and repentance and go on to final peace and restoration. ...kind of like tuff love! The point being they are sinful and God calls them to repent. Thor  Understood within it's total book context this is what God is saying. This "all" is not every Jew in the nation of Israel who called on the name of the Lord. The context in Romans and the rest of scripture cannot possibly mean everyone. There are numerous places of which i have already addressed in past forums where all cannot fit in a context in other places. And in the context of Romans is taught the remnant theology. There were the National Israel and then the remnant within the National.Just because a Jew was circumcised. did not mean that he was part of the remnant of Israel. Paul argues that the reason that salvation was all of grace was because Abraham received the promise before he was circumcised. So then salvation could not have been according to circumcision.The reason that salvation was not from anything a man could perform was that the state of man under Adam was one of blindness... and death to spiritual things. Calling on the name of the Lord was not the reason for being a part of the remnant. It also says that there must be a change in the heart. Salvation has never been according to what men do in order to obtain it. Jacob i love... Esau i hated. In fact the National Jew was not able to give up his idols. The national Jew love his other gods and took part in the ceremonial system. But the remnant jew hated idols. Both called on the name of the Lord... then national Jew only called on the Lord out of a servile relationship to the ceremonial law. Were as the remnant Jew called on the name of the Lord day and nite... or according to his love for God. His heart was transformed. Through out romans Paul is distinguishing these two groups... the Pharisees ... the teachers and then the chosen remnant. One stumbled over the promised redeemer while those who were pre ordained to eternal life enjoyed all of the blessing of the Promise. One was a child of Rebeka.. while the other was a child of Hagar... the law. I can only say that i told you so. You know my friend. Reply Quote Notify 5298  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Really neat twist on an old favorite. on: March 23, 2009, 06:45:03 PM Quote from: learning to lean on March 23, 2009, 11:52:05 AM I too an seeking truth, but only because I have a relationship with truth Himself. The point that I was making is that Zacceus went with no intention of inviting Jesus into his life.  Jesus made that move.  And while Zacceus stature put him into the tree,  it was not where one would have looked for a person on the off chance of recieving and invitation.  God set all these people in action long ago.  The crowd the tree the visit to Jerico even Zacceus stature was all for this point in time.  God (outside of time)  predestined events in time would come together for the glory of God.  I am becoming more persuaded that reformed theology has this on right.  still not ready on all points to dive in, but this one has fewer obstacles.  If only I could be move on limited atonment.  That and the Rapture will take alot more convincing me. The point i think about Zacharias was that he was a tax collector and he had cheated other people out of their money. In that day they did not uphold the rites of a citizen... tax collectors were like mob collectors. He was also small in stature. I guess the point was that he had an idea to climb this tree in order to see Jesus... cause Jesus had a large crowd following. I would like to think the idea was put into his head by the Lord. I mean obviously the Lord could read mens thoughts. He was not only fully human ... but He was fully God. He had read the thoughts of another convert who was sitting under a tree as the scripture says. And there was a work of grace going on in Zacharias prior to going into the tree because he was wanting to see Jesus. Its interesting how Jesus focused on the individual. I mean  there was many people who touched Jesus... but at one point the scripture talks about this particular person out of all of  the people who had been around Jesus... and touched Him so that Jesus turned and said Who touched me? Then he did a healing.  Here was a man who probably was hated by most men who were watching that day. Then Jesus tells him that He is going to his house. So this would have been something that struck the hearts of those other people. That Jesus would pick such a sinner. But Jesus was not looking for the righteous... they did not need a Savior... He came to save sinners. So that every time He would focus on an individual.. it usually was a person who was desperate and hated among the rest of the by standers. The  gospels are written so that we would see that in coming to these different individuals .. we would see that Jesus saved lost men... dead men... men who were the lowest sinners of that society. So that the message was not about the men.. it was about the goodness of Christ. It wasnt about the ability of men to be living up to the standard of Christ and then they got Christ attention by their ability. But Christ always came upon someone who had no other way to go in this world. Here He prepares Zacharias for salvation by bringing him low in society.  5304  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: March 23, 2009, 01:06:24 PM All of worship is a means of grace. It is the word of God coming to the soul with transforming power. Some of the changes are undetectable to the soul. Now the experience of worship has highs and lows. If the word is dwelling richly in the exercise of the faculties... that is having fellowship with the Trinity through a spiritual understanding in these divine illuminations ...then there is a purification experience as the word is being in grafted as the divine influence follows the divine communication. The quality of the detail in a pure doctrine is that communication of the personal effects of this transformation. God literally communicates Himself in His word, so that the souls hunger is satisfied in the paradigm of these spiritual senses. Once the senses receive the perfecting communication of the spiritual effects of all that Christ is... then there is a heightened spiritual pleasure. The soul cannot be satisfied in any other way being in a natural state of fluctuation due to the flesh waring against the nature of Gods divine communication. This is the working of grace. The spiritual communication of the Holy Spirit in renewing the soul.  When we partake of the body and blood of Christ in these elements... we are sharing in the fellowship of His suffering. The reality of this battle we have with the flesh and with Satan pertaining to sharing in the suffering of Christ in this communication of it by His grace.. the influence of His unfailing love... the spiritual effects of His resistance to this whole paradigm of adversity become our help in the communication of these elements of grace. We are infused with a spiritual sense of our union with Christ.It is a new conversion to our understanding of the fellowship in His forgiveness and full pardon of being drawn into a heightened experience of His favor so that we have an assurance of a specific protection of our vital parts and in that we rejoice that we gain a new understanding of our advantage in overcoming the enemy of our souls. This is a communication of Christ dominion over all things in the divine renewal to our understanding of sharing in this infusion. The grace of the sacraments has increased our faith more than any other means that we can experience. This is from yrs of meditating on Psalm 22 in taking these elements in means of grace.    Reply Quote Notify 5305  Forums / Main Forum / Re: Catholic Question about John 6 on: March 23, 2009, 12:49:38 PM All of worship is a means of grace. It is the word of God coming to the soul with transforming power. Some of the changes are undetectable to the soul. Now the experience of worship has highs and lows. If the word is dwelling richly in the exercise of the faculties... that is having fellowship with the Trinity through a spiritual understanding in these divine illuminations ...then there is a purification experience as the word is being in grafted as the divine influence follows the divine communication. The quality of the detail in a pure doctrine is that communication of the personal effects of this transformation. God literally communicates Himself in His word, so that the souls hunger is satisfied in the paradigm of these spiritual senses. Once the senses receive the perfecting communication of the spiritual effects of all that Christ is... then there is a heightened spiritual pleasure. The soul cannot be satisfied in any other way being in a natural state of fluctuation due to the flesh waring against the nature of Gods divine communication. This is the working of grace. The spiritual communication of the Holy Spirit in renewing the soul.  When we partake of the body and blood of Christ in these elements... we are sharing in the fellowship of His suffering. The reality of this battle we have with the flesh and with Satan pertaining to sharing in the suffering of Christ in this communication of it by His grace.. the influence of His unfailing love... the spiritual effects of His resistance to this whole paradigm of adversity become our help in the communication of these elements of grace. We are infused with a spiritual sense of our union with Christ.It is a new conversion to our understanding of the fellowship in His forgiveness and full pardon of being drawn into a heightened experience of His favor so that we have an assurance of a specific protection of our vital parts and in that we rejoice that we gain a new understanding of our advantage in overcoming the enemy of our souls. This is a communication of Christ dominion over all things in the divine renewal to our understanding of sharing in this infusion. The grace of the sacraments has increased our faith more than any other means that we can experience. This is from yrs of meditating on Psalm 22 in taking these elements in means of grace.    5315  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: March 20, 2009, 09:12:45 AM Your saying that Calvinism needs a balance. You argue that you are balancing us out because we believe in sovereign grace. The problem is that your presenting a position that is the opposite of our position... not a remedy for us. You quote historical authors that would disagree with you about your just like we are. This disagreement is not new. You are not being righteous by trying to reverse the order of the chain of salvation that is found in Romans. Salvation is all of God... we are completely passive. We disagree with you about mans state prior to salvation. We believe that man is totally depraved. You believe that man has the ability to express his faith in order to be saved. He has a will that is not under bondage. We believe that man in his pre salvation state is unable to respond to the gospel until he is regenerated by the Spirit. You believe that faith comes before regeneration. We believe the opposite. You believe that God has left the message of the gospel to be preached throughout the earth and it is up to man to respond. We believe that God chooses men before the foundation of the world... that He leaves some men in their sins and He saves some men ...of whom He chose before hand. You believe that the Christ died for all men... and that He has made a way for all men to be saved... We believe that Christ atonement was definite... that He obtained salvation for the elect at the cross... only to be transacted in Gods appointed time. You believe that man must keep his salvation by obtaining forgiveness by his life style. We believe that God keeps man not based upon mans ability to persevere to the end but based upon Gods faithfulness in bringing man into salvation. So if we simply accept your premise that you are genuinely trying to straighten us out by insinuating that we do not work at all or we do not understand the doctrine of sanctification then you are simply wrong. Calvinist who understand Gods sovereignty work harder and think deeper than most of the people on your side of the fence. You guys are concerned about all the insignificant things. You all like to fruit inspect. And you place heavy burdens on mens backs. Basically i am saying that you guys are belly button theologians. Now if i were to work with you.... i would be a good friend. This is for the sake of argument and setting things straight. Reply Quote Notify 5316  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: March 19, 2009, 09:58:04 PM This is just like marriage. Its hard to find a church that has the same vision that one has about how the Spirit is moving in ones life. There are many variables in the equation. The apostles underlying motive in all of their preaching as they moved from city to city was encouragement. This is from the view of these spiritual desires that are the fruit of the Spirit. Where ever the Spirit is there is freedom... that being the spirit of encouragement. There really is no reason for a person to go to church and become disillusioned ... discouraged... uninterested. The ways of worship are caught like entering a fire and getting hot. Thats why we have such a dichotomy in the modern day church. We have been doing this religious thing for a very long time. We learned all the wrong techniques by reading the books. We have more study helps available than in any time in the history of the Reformation. Our problems are not like the early church. Here they were trying to hold some consistency ... because there were so many transformations... that were visible... and the Spirit was free to move in the worship. It was a devoted spiritual focus... not on the peripheral things. It was a focus on the bible, the people of fellowship, the sacraments and prayer. The apostle wrote to the Corinthians because there was so much confusion because the people were bent on not quenching the Spirit. Its so much different and in some ways we are a few generations with this automatic and confrontational form of religion. Reply Quote Notify 5317  Forums / Main Forum / Re: God's love on: March 19, 2009, 09:33:58 PM Just to give you another side to this. I recognize the expression of the relationship and the words that you use. Its kind of like having a coach and then you plug in the language and just repeat it until it becomes what you believe. I mean , the other side is that we can create something by what we believe. There is so much stuff out there about marriage and relationships as far as teaching that sound good but even tho they may describe the problem ... the answers are not the rite prescription.  I believe that we must form our opinions about the other person by biblical meanings from the doctrines of the bible. I know this sounds old fashion... but problems are not solved by short term solutions or third party politics. In a sense we create the situation by what we believe. Its like a self fulfilling prophecy. We say so and so raise me like this.... i am repeating the behavior ... therefore i must not make the same mistake. Or it goes like this.... i cant change until i go back over the decisions that i made and work on myself so that i will not make the same decisions. The problem is that when we focus on ourselves.... without integrating the wisdom of God then we never learn to think for ourselves. In other words its either a life of second guessing... or its a biblical world view. That is we can either follow the wisdom of the world... that is the wisdom that is based in science of studying human relationships or we can follow the wisdom of the bible... the bible is all we need to live a life of godliness. In other words i wouldnt put a lot of stock in the idea that you are doing the same things your parents did. The reality is that was yrs ago. The reality is that you are doing what you are thinking other people told you about a study they did on human relationships. The bible does not say we are what we were in our past... or what other human wisdom tells us we are... but we are what we think. Our self reflection is a gift from God. We carry this with us from day to day. God Himself has a perfect image of Himself. We on the other hand do not have a perfect image. But the bible is for our good because it sets the image of God in us by changing us from the inside out... or it transforms us. It doesnt offer us a system of communication... or a system of pointing out the failures as a way of thinking. But the bible teaches us how to think so that we are who God says we are. God is able to change your husband by prayer. The hard and slow way of change is always lasting. The wheels of heaven turn slowly. The bible, prayer , sacraments, worship are the reasons for developing long lasting relationships. And they are the only way to persevere through tough times. Be careful with counseling in this day and age. We got more counselors than lawyers.... and we got more divorces.    5319  Forums / Main Forum / Re: Christians: MORE LIKLEY to get divorced. on: March 19, 2009, 09:02:54 PM Just to give you another side to this. I recognize the expression of the relationship and the words that you use. Its kind of like having a coach and then you plug in the language and just repeat it until it becomes what you believe. I mean , the other side is that we can create something by what we believe. There is so much stuff out there about marriage and relationships as far as teaching that sound good but even tho they may describe the problem ... the answers are not the rite prescription.  I believe that we must form our opinions about the other person by biblical meanings from the doctrines of the bible. I know this sounds old fashion... but problems are not solved by short term solutions or third party politics. In a sense we create the situation by what we believe. Its like a self fulfilling prophecy. We say so and so raise me like this.... i am repeating the behavior ... therefore i must not make the same mistake. Or it goes like this.... i cant change until i go back over the decisions that i made and work on myself so that i will not make the same decisions. The problem is that when we focus on ourselves.... without integrating the wisdom of God then we never learn to think for ourselves. In other words its either a life of second guessing... or its a biblical world view. That is we can either follow the wisdom of the world... that is the wisdom that is based in science of studying human relationships or we can follow the wisdom of the bible... the bible is all we need to live a life of godliness. In other words i wouldnt put a lot of stock in the idea that you are doing the same things your parents did. The reality is that was yrs ago. The reality is that you are doing what you are thinking other people told you about a study they did on human relationships. The bible does not say we are what we were in our past... or what other human wisdom tells us we are... but we are what we think. Our self reflection is a gift from God. We carry this with us from day to day. God Himself has a perfect image of Himself. We on the other hand do not have a perfect image. But the bible is for our good because it sets the image of God in us by changing us from the inside out... or it transforms us. It doesnt offer us a system of communication... or a system of pointing out the failures as a way of thinking. But the bible teaches us how to think so that we are who God says we are. God is able to change your husband by prayer. The hard and slow way of change is always lasting. The wheels of heaven turn slowly. The bible, prayer , sacraments, worship are the reasons for developing long lasting relationships. And they are the only way to persevere through tough times. Be careful with counseling in this day and age. We got more counselors than lawyers.... and we got more divorces.    Reply Quote Notify 5320  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: predestination on: March 19, 2009, 08:24:56 PM Quote Don't become a fatalist. Islam is a prime example of fatalism. They believe 100% in fatalism/predestination...if Allah wills!  And how far have they fallen behind the West? Those who believe and try...do. Those who doubt, and don't...fail. Yes....this is what the prophets of Baal said to Elijah ... our gods are more powerful than Jehovah...just as God had sent fire down and consumed their sacrifices. God is able to do as He pleases ... even with the god of contingency. Reply Quote Notify 5321  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: March 19, 2009, 03:39:10 PM First of all the church was established by the Holy Spirit through the apostles and who appointed elders in every church. They then established the office of deacons so that the elders of the church could give themselves to the study of Gods word. The word was put together by the Holy Spirit who through the Apostles who wrote the NT were written to specific gatherings with elders and deacons . The Apostles went into a city and established churches and appointed leaders in each church. There was a congregational part to this decision as well as in the sending out of Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey.These journeys were for establishing the churches. The authority of the word of God was established in the churches... letters that were written were passed from church to church. This was very miraculous since these canonical books were already being used by the church before King James. Maybe with the exception of the book of James. This whole process was built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus as the head. They were regulated by the Apostles doctrine.. the fellowship... the breaking of bread... and prayer... reading the word. I dont want to make this a strictly smooth process or a process that was difficult. The origin of the first church was a unity that was supernatural. It was just after Christ had ascended that the disciples along with the woman went into the upper room and begin a long drawn out pray session. It was because Christ had promised to send the comforter the Holy Spirit in an unusual way. I think they were powerless until the Holy Spirit had come upon them. And just like the Holy Spirit had come on Christ at His baptism ... then Christ was filled with the Spirit and power. The Holy Spirit actually gave Christ the power as He entered into the dessert to be tempted by the Devil. It was a seal of the Spirit on Christ ministry. Then Christ was filled with power. Now then you come to the promise of Christ... i believe that Christ actually promised the disciples that He Himself would baptize them with this power. It was Christ baptism... and i am of the opinion... it is a mystery ... but i think that Christ baptism is different than the baptism of the Spirit for salvation. Now i am not of the second baptism because i believe that Christ baptism is not a continual experience. Its not related to any form of worship or any activity of salvation.Its strictly Christ promising this power.I mean this experience that we cannot muster up on our own. Its a special visitation of the Holy Spirit....its evident to everyone that for the purpose of witness. Its some profound and living power that comes as a result of this visitation. Now i believe this is what Christ poured upon the first Church. There were these different evidences. Speaking in tongs... prophet utterance.... and then at one point they were all as happy as drunks.It was so evident that the people thought they were drunk with wine. Now i have had this experience... never spoke in tongs or prophesied. but the experience has been in different periods in my life. I have been very aware that the Spirit was upon me that i have envisioned a serenity of heaven. I seriously have thought many times that i could be swallowed up to the heavens. Now this is what cause the church to be so prosperous without the entire counsel. It was the gospel in power. The profound work of the Spirit. It was a bold spread of Christianity over the face of the earth. The Apostle Himself was energized by the Spirit though out His life so that He was moved to continue on. I agree... i want to give the flavor .. of all of this not just a academic succession of events. I had memorized the book of Acts a number of yrs ago. This book is the book of the Holy Spirit. Now you have the Apostle here and then you have all of these jews gathered for the passover and then they are there and Peter begins to speak... then the Spirit comes on them... now then these people are experiencing this amazing new power. I think it was so profound that it was even greater than the physical presence of Christ. Here then they begin to communicate to each other ..in different tongs... but you have this prophesying going on and you have the people who are given understanding ... and all of this is under the power of a joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. Peter talks about this baptism in first Pet. And then these people are scattered when Jerusalem fell. This experience was so profound that they were witnessing in every region that they were scattered to. And then the Apostles begin to preach the gospel .. then the Spirit falls on these meetings and then they are there filled with the power from on High. God coming down... the Spirit giving evidence by prophecy and tongs. Then they come to Cornelius and there they are jew and gentile... the church had spread from the Jew to the gentile.. and this time they are there gathered and then the Spirit falls on them... they began to speak the word of God boldly. THey had been given the message by the Spirit... and they were there prophesying and speaking the word... it had great effect so that they were all there and rejoicing ... they had experienced this boldness... and they were speaking so fluidly.. and the word was just going forth .. the apostle peter said that these gentiles had received the Spirit just as we jews had on the day of the first fruits. So Peter then says that Christ had poured forth His Spirit.
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