Bethesda Shalom

Matthew 6:7-13 It seems that almost every other month, another Christian in the position of leadership, jumps to a social media platform to announce to the world that they’re stepping down from ministry due to some moral failing; or in the case of the last two months, that they’re abandoning the faith altogether!  Apostasy has always existed in the ranks of the fold and exhortations abound in the New Testament, calling us as believers to perseverance!  What you ask, is the secret of enduring faith and victory?  In one word, humility!!  “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you” (James 4:6-8).     Indeed, we are charged with the task with taking to arm us for the fight, the whole armour of God; but we must never forget who it is that is on our side, fighting for us.  Our Lord instructed us to pray “…lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Mt. 6:13). 

Zechariah 4:6-9 So often in our theology, we begin with man first and forget that the opening words before ever mention is made of man is; “In the beginning God…”  God is the great first cause of all things.  By Him and through His Word, the whole universe was brought into existence.  How often do we really seek counsel from the Lord for direction at life’s crossroads?  How often do we consult Him and enquire of His counsel?  In this sermon, we really bring home the need for a Word from God in season.  God is faithful and delights in revealing His will!  For the soul that seeks Him, standing on His promises; that soul shall never be disappointed.  It matters not the mountain that stands before you; if God has spoken into the situation, what He has said, He will do!  The question is, will we believe the Word of the Lord?

Revelation 14 We come in this teaching to our first interlude since beginning the second section of the Book of Revelation. This is a very quick-paced chapter, full of various visions.  A lot of ground is covered in just twenty verses.  First, we are met again, with that special group of Jewish men; 144,000 Messianic believers, gathered on Mount Sion with the Lamb.  Next, John sees, three heralding angels, proceeding one another, each with a different cry.  Finally, we are met with a vision pertaining to the end harvest - the gathering together for the day judgment both of the righteous and the wicked.  May God help us as we study this chapter, to make sense of what is written.

2 Chronicles 14 It seems that the hardest thing to get Christians to do today is to pray, and because there is no individual prayer life there is no corporate prayer life!  The prayer closets of the average Christian are perpetually vacant and the Church prayer meeting has long been abandoned.  I don’t know about you, but for me, this send’s the strongest possible message.  If actions could speak (and they do); they would say in short; “WE DON’T NEED GOD!!”.  What is prayer but in its simplest essence, making our requests known unto God.  Yet here’s the irony; the man who does not feel his need, will not pray his need.  The great urgency of the day is not to convince Christians to pray, but to convince them of their need to pray!!!  This sermon is a clarion call, for the Church to again discover the greatest weapon ever given it…prayer!  In this day of great peril, who will be willing again to seek the Lord in prayer?  Let us do so, not only individually, but also corporately, that we might see the hand of Go

Matthew 16:13-18 Pastor Jason from Bourne Evangelical Church brings a very timely word from the Lord in season.  Using the promise that Jesus made to build His Church, He shows how God is still at work in the land, raising up a faithful remnant for the glory of His name.  Those who want to do things their own way find themselves in apostasy as Church after Church across this land closes its doors for good.  Yet, those who want to do things God’s way—faithfully preaching His Word and standing on it, are finding that God is still the same, mighty to raise up a testimony of His true Church in the earth!!  Do it again O Lord, do it again!! To find out more about Pastor Jason Wright, please visit here: https://www.bourneevangelical.org/

Revelation 13:11-18 We come in this twenty-second teaching part to a second beast which John saw coming up out of the earth.  Who is this second beast, and what shall be his function and office?  How does his activity correlate to the person of the first beast?  What is the image that John beheld, speaking and causing as many as would not worship the image to be killed?  Then there’s mention made of a mark, which all men shall be made to receive and without which no man might buy or sell unless they have this mark.  What is the number of his name and the wisdom needed for understanding? We discuss all of these questions in this teaching and turn to the Scriptures to shed precious light on the answers. 

1 Samuel 22:1-3 “The world’s greatest men usually enter incognito. The tough youngsters who gathered in Jesse’s back yard of a summer afternoon to play the ancient equivalent of piggy-move-up would not have shoved Jesse’s youngest boy around quite so freely if they had had a touch of second sight to let them see that they were taking liberties with the greatest king Israel was ever to know.  But their blindness made possible many a glorious day of fun for the boys in the neighborhood...Such are the ways of God when He prepares His saints and heroes:  He leaves them unrecognized by the world until the day of their “showing unto Israel””. – A.W Tozer

1 Samuel 7:1-13 As Christians, we ought never to lose the living testimony of a Living God in our midst!  The increasingly secular world in which we live declares that God is dead and as such, derides anyone who would dare to come out in the public square and declare that Jesus is real and living! The great danger in our day is that we can become so PC that we’ve nothing left of a Christian testimony whereby God can be glorified!  We must resist this temptation to “fit-in”.  Has not the Lord been good to us?  Has He not by His mighty arm delivered us again and again out of many dangers?  When we had no one else to turn to, was not the Lord our rock?  As we dig into 1 Samuel 7, we see that while Israel walked with the Lord, they had a testimony of His mighty deliverance; but when they turned their hearts from Him to serve idols, then was this testimony lost.  This is a call to return unto the Lord with wholeness of heart that we might see again in our midst, a living testimony of a Living God.    

Revelation 13:1-10 I cannot stress enough, the importance and the significance of the chapter that is before us tonight, in better aiding our understanding of the nature, role, and function of the antichrist in his hour of power during the Great Tribulation.  It is important to point out, that John does not stand in isolation in the things he sees. The prophet Daniel, some 600 years before, foresaw similar events.  He too saw beasts rising out of the sea, the fourth being diverse from the others that came before it, having ten horns. Both the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation, due to their nature and the similarities of the material found within them, have been labelled as apocalyptic.  God in his wisdom has given us two such books so that by reading both in tandem, we would arrive at a fuller understanding of eschatology.  By understanding the one, it better aids our understanding of the other; and it is for this reason that we are going to be spending quite a bit of time this evening studying the bo

Matthew 16:24-25 When you purpose with all your heart that you are going to walk through this life with the single determination at every juncture to say, YES to the will of God and NO to the will of man!  Get ready, for a life of misunderstanding; judgment, criticism, and persecution.  To walk with God friends at times is to tread a lonely path of obscurity, and we have to settle it in our heart from the onset that we will seek only the smile and approval of God!  If this was the path the Master went; should not the servant tread it still?  Who will say YES to the Master?  YES to Your way and No to Mine? 

Matthew 24:1-13 This is a sermon that will both challenge and equip believers to get ready for the Lord’s return.  It is by no means exhaustive, but key principles and commands are passionately given in order to help prepare the Bride of Christ to make it through in these last days. This sermon was delivered at Israel and Prophecy.  For more information, visit: www.israelandprophecy.org

Revelation 12 There are some that maintain, that the book of Revelation is so full of imagery that no sense can be made of any of it.  I admit, that the book is full of imagery, but I add that that imagery is not random but specific and deliberate for those with eyes to see!  Who is this woman, clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet and upon her head twelve stars?  Who is this red dragon, who makes war with the remnant of her seed?  What is this war in heaven and why does the dragon persecute the woman, who brought forth the man child? In this teaching, we answer these questions and endeavour to unpack this difficult chapter and to understand it in light of end times events.  May the Lord shine light upon His word?    

Romans 1:16 As one surveys the last two thousand years of Church history, one will see that sadly, anti-Semitism has plagued its ranks at every juncture, hiding beneath the thinly clad veneer of theology so-called. Replacement theology—the belief that the Church has replaced national Israel (the Jewish people) in becoming the new inheritors of the promises given specifically to Israel in the Tanakh—has caused an arrogance to arise in the Christian Church (comprising largely of Gentile believers) of which the Apostle Paul warned against in the eleventh chapter of the book of Romans; “Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee” (Rom. 11:18). In this sermon teaching, the biblical foundation is laid and the mandate given us by God’s word, to take the gospel into all the world, first to the Jewish people and then to the Gentile.  May God give us again a burden for Jewish mission!  This sermon was shared at the 2019 Messianic Testimony West Midlands Rally.  For f

Revelation 11 We are met in this chapter for the first time, explicit mention made of the beast.  Until now, not a single mention of this character has been made by name; everything that we have said about him, we have done so by inference.  Before Revelation 11, the word “beast” in reference to the Antichrist is nowhere to be found; yet after Revelation 11; the word “beast” in reference to the Antichrist occurs no less than 36 times.  In this teaching, we begin to look at little closer at the beast along with the two witnesses.  Who are these two witnesses and what is their purpose?  We shall answer these questions along with others as we explore this eleventh chapter of Revelation.  

Proverbs 3:5 David brings a message that has at its core, absolute surrender to God!  “…In Scotland once I was in a company where we were talking about the condition of Christ's Church, and what the great need of the Church and of believers is, and there was in our company a godly worker who has much to do in training workers, and I asked him what he would say was the great need of the Church, and the message that ought to be preached. He answered very quietly and simply and determinedly "Absolute surrender to God is the one thing." – Andrew Murray David Donovan, along with his wife Shirley, are the founders of a medical mission to the people of the Niger Delta called New Foundations. To find out more about New Foundations, please visit: https://newfoundations.org.uk/

Revelation 10 Six angels have given sound to their trumpets; two great woes have been brought upon humanity by the hand of God with the most devastating effects.  One trumpet has yet to sound, the seventh and the last; the third and final woe.  Just as there was an interlude between the sixth and seventh seals, so we have here, another interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets. John beholds in a vision a mighty angel, coming down from heaven with a little book open book in his hand.  We explore the events of this interesting chapter and as we do, we look a little closer at the topic of angels.

1 Corinthians 4:1-5 The longer that I’m alive and the longer that I continue in service to the Lord, is the more that I’ve come to realise, you can’t please everyone!!  What will be pleasing to one, will inevitably be the cause of displeasure to another and what will serve to light a smile on one face will no doubt serve to put a frown on another.  Of course, as a Christian, we’re mandated to let our light shine before men that in seeing our good works, they might give praise to God.  “In all things (writes Paul to Titus) shewing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, Sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.” (Tit. 2:7-8).  But what happens when after we have done this, we are still yet the target of men’s judgment and criticism?  Then, we must seek the approval and good pleasure of God alone by faithful obedience to that which He has called each of us to do! In this sermon,

Revelation 9 Four blasts of the trumpet have gone before us; four pronouncements of God’s judgment aimed at the earth in which men are indirectly affected by the catastrophic impact each judgment brings with it.  Three great woes now await the inhabitants of the earth.  In a manner reminiscent of the days of Moses in which the kingdom of Egypt was judged by ten plagues which befell it; so, in a similar fashion, God begins at the end to do that which He began to do at the start of the Exodus.     In this seventeenth teaching part, we look into the terrifying trumpet judgments of trumpets five and six. 

Matthew 28:19-20 The last words of our Lord, recorded by Matthew, were not, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”; the last words of our Lord were; “...and  lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world”.  My Brothers and Sisters, take these words to heart!!  Let them be the meditation of your thoughts.  No matter what we go through as believers; no matter how great the offences and how bitter the disappointments; Jesus has promised that He’ll never leave us, nor forsake us, “So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me” (Heb. 13:5-6). Shared at Israel and Prophecy meeting.  For more information, visit: www.israelandprophecy.org

Revelation 8 Following the brief interlude of chapter 7, we rejoin again the events of the seven seals, which has been the central theme of Revelation, since chapter 5.  Six seals have thus far been opened, revealing dark and terrible days ahead, which shall take place upon the earth on a global scale. Seven angels assigned with a staggering mission. To each is given a trumpet which when blown brings forth the next wave of God’s wrath!! We examine in this teaching the first four of these seven trumpet judgments.