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Whereas the major part of Christendom has moved, and is moving farther and farther away from its original apostolic model… And whereas the subtle and appealing forces of iniquity and apostasy will soon reach their full paroxysm with the appearance of Antichrist, only a RETURN to the standards of God as revealed in the Holy Scriptures will guarantee the coming of a New Reformation and Restoration within the Church. The apostasy of our day is first characterized by a psycho-social charismatism dominated by unsanctified hearts and by the longings of the flesh. This has prompted a search for sensual and emotional experiences and spectacular demonstrations of the "power" and the "glory" of God, dissociated from Christ and Him crucified. This is the driving force, which is continually pushing the Church towards a state of loadicean triumphalism based on experiential subjectivism and a resurgent illuminism. This illuminism, born of deceiving spirits distorts the Truth of the Holy Scriptures to the benefit of misinterpretations that promote the desire to fulfill felt needs as well as seeking "new revelations of the Holy Spirit", instead of God's sole glory and holiness. Secondly, post-Christian philosophy has subtly and gradually misrepresented the evangelical message of the cross under the influence of ecumenical and fundamentally humanistic thoughts marked by doctrinal relativism, dead scholarship or intellectualism, and a weakening of the moral standards and the eternal values of the Kingdom of God which disaggregated into the immanence of the temporal through a theology of evangelization by acculturation. All this demonstrates that the Church today has sunk into conformism to the world, with its mental framework and its humanistic socio-politico-cultural message. This drift is being generated by the dual politico-religious forces represented by Jezebel and Ahab which pave the way for the arrival of the antichrist within a Christendom dominated by a general drowsiness and a babylonian spirit of spiritual prostitution and compromise.
A Return to the Bible and the Message of the Calvary The Revival which we are longing for must consequently be a Biblical Revival and a return to historical Christian faith; that is, a rebirth of the great biblical doctrinal principles of the Protestant Reformation under Luther and Calvin, among them, the plain authority of the Scriptures in the believer’s life and justification by faith (Ephesians 2:8,9). Only a genuine preaching of the Word of God will revive the invaluable truths of the Holy Spirit that modern apostasy and Post-Christian ideas have totally undermined. In such a background, a return to the old paths (Jeremiah 6:16; 18:15) of God's Written Revelation is a fundamental need: "The Scriptures are, for the Church as well as for each individual, the principle of a spontaneous, permanent and daily reformation. As long as it is regularly read and seriously applied, there is no ground for sin to take root and for abuse to transform itself into practice. Evil is immediately announced by so vigilant a guard, and conscience, awakened by its warnings, rises, protests, condemns and reforms. God then does not need to judge us, because we judge ourselves. But as soon as the Word is put under the bushel, the darkness invades the house, whether it is the Church, the family, or the heart. Evil bursts; it is not distinguished. It grows; it is not heeded. It reigns; one realizes it afterwards, and everyone suffers from it; natural awareness of good and evil ends up protesting. But it is too late! Evil, once established, has become a Master; it thwarts the human efforts intended to repress it. It is to late to dam the torrent when it has already left its bed and submerged the countryside." (Frédéric Godet, Histoire de la Réformation dans le Pays de Neuchâtel, 1859). To preach salvation is to preach CHRIST and HIM CRUCIFIED (1 Corinthians 1:23; 2:2), the source of life for all men, thus placing back the Redemption of mankind through the work of Jesus-Christ at the center of God's purposes, which mightily affirms the attributes of the Divinity: His Justice and His Holiness on one side, and His Love and His Grace on the other. This preaching is a proclamation to every heart of the glorious Good News of the God who "so loved the world that He gave His Only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). It draws the sinners to the precious fountain of life full of the blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, the precious blood which washes all their guilty stains and purifies their hearts. This preaching thus completely shades today's many relativisms, making secondary and futile man's innumerable concerns, in an age where the latter has deified himself to so high a degree that he has become his own center of attraction, his own reference. In other words, man has created his own ways of deliverance whether they are philosophical, moral, social, psychological or political, or even religious. To preach salvation therefore amounts to confronting the condition of the whole of mankind, lost without Christ, with the absolute need for repentance, as a starting point for an inner transformation and a new creation. Such a preaching destroys any universalistic tendency of New Age religions, or antinomianism of a false Christianity. It restores the absolute centrality of the work of Calvary in the Christian experience, from the justification of the condemned sinner, to his regeneration and his complete deliverance from sin. To preach salvation is to transmit the anguished cry of the Father's heart who wants all sinners to be saved. "I am a short-lived creature, going through life as a swallow in the sky. I am a spirit coming from God and returning to God, appearing one moment before disappearing into immutable eternity. I only desire to know one single thing: the way to heaven. Give me the Book of God! It contains all I need to know." - John Wesley To preach grace is to hinder man's pride, his tendency to self-glorification and self-worship, his legalism, his religiosity which praises his works, his moral or intellectual skills, his knowledge, his culture and his science. God's grace annihilates every thought, every doctrine, every religion which, following the example of Roman Catholicism, seek to usurp the place of God by establishing man instead, with his own justice, his efforts, his magic performance, his rites, his theological systems, his traditions and institutions. Re-emphasizing that man can be saved but by grace is to affirm that justification, regeneration and sanctification are the sovereign and ultimate work of God by the power of the Holy Spirit and that the flesh cannot gain at all divine favour. Experiencing God's grace opens the locks of heaven both on the repenting sinners and the saints, making them taste these heavenly showers which come from the vastness of God's love manifested in Christ. To return to grace as the only means of salvation and Christian growth, will lead the hungry soul to intimately know and experience God as the only source of life and godliness (Titus 2:11,12). To preach faith brings all seeking and repenting hearts into the single way which leads to Eternal Life: Jesus-Christ, the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world and offers forgiveness to whoever entrusts Him without any restriction in a childlike faith. Faith in Christ thrusts the believer into the perfect rest of God and opens the way to a living and joyful, personal communion with the God of all grace. Faith permanently re-actualizes the experience of a living communion with God through a complete abandonment to Christ. To preach faith in Christ is vigorously opposed to the obliging attitude of the religious specialist who imprisons doctrine in material or intellectual terms without knowing the glorious and living experience of Him that is the object of that very faith. Preaching faith consequently also invalidates any attempt at spiritual advance proceeding of carnal energies and methods: mysticism, asceticism, psychic emotions, and experiences. It is to lay the foundation of an obeying confidence in the written revelation of the One who has made all things come into existence by His word and whose immutable promises found their full expression in the Eternal Son (Hebrew 1:2). This ultimately amounts to rejecting any justification by the law or works (Galatians 5:4). Faith totally embraces Christ in a union, which leads to holiness.
A Return to Holiness and Sanctification But the ultimate God-promised Revival should not stop at the tides of the 16th century Reformation lest it should enthrone itself in the form of another theological system made up of dead creeds and dogmas imprisoning the Spirit of God in an intellectualism and a mental belief which replace a personal and living faith, and in sterile doctrinal orthodoxy dislodging the powerful truth of the Word of God revived by the experience of grace. Sundar Singh once defined the pitfall to be avoided as follows: "I do not condemn theological science, nor all the theologians of which several are saints. I am not opposed to studies, but without the life they darken spiritual vision. A theology void of prayer is a fountain without water. I have learned many useful things in my studies, but the teaching of the Spirit that I received, I received at the feet of the Master." The ultimate awakening has at its disposal the vast sea of entire sanctification and holiness in Christ, which was lived in pietistic movements of the 17th and 18th centuries (the Holiness movement resulting from the Moravians, and the Methodist awakening under the influence of John Wesley). Refreshing herself at the historical sources of these great outpourings of grace, the Church must return to the freshness of an anointed life of prayer and of her passion for the lost, which will manifest itself through the evangelization of the crowds and the poor, and an expansive missionary activity. This second great historical Reformation that the Methodist Revival has been teaches us that, "the goal of Scripture is an intensely personal love for Jesus possessing your whole being. The goal of redemption is your love relationship, your love life with Jesus. Christian living is living in love with Jesus. Prayer communion is looking lovingly into Jesus' eyes, thrilling to Jesus' voice, resting in Jesus' arms." - Wesley L Duewel.
A Return to the Power of the Holy Spirit To achieve all this work in obedience to the Great Commission of the Lord Jesus for the Church to make disciples of all the nations, in an unfavourable environment which is vigorously opposed to the Gospel more than at any other time throughout history, will lead the Church to experience the supernatural and miraculous power of the Holy Spirit. And it is there that the New Reformation will have to follow the tracks of the Pentecostal movement of the beginning of the 20th century, which again gave liberty to the Holy Ghost, His gifts, and brought back a quickening heart religion, and renewed the Church in purity of heart and the holiness of her first love. The Spirit of God will again inspire a specific hymnology which, as in the Welsh Revival of 1904, will exalt and lift up the Lamb alone in heavenly worship, because the Spirit of God merely seeks to glorify Jesus-Christ as the Lord of all hearts (John 16:4) - the Comforter sent by the Father has only one mission: to baptize with divine fire, purify, sanctify and lead the children of God in all truth in order to bring them to perfection, enabled then to reflect the beloved Son and to accomplish the same works as He did and even greater ones (John 14:12).
A Return to Universal Priesthood and the New Testament Church Lastly, the fourth part of that Restoration must coincide with a rediscovery of universal priesthood by which each and every child of God will return to the full communion with Christ and will enjoy his identity as priest in the body. The vocation of the Church indeed is to build, strengthen, and reproduce individuals, living stones in the image of Christ through a growth in the knowledge of the Savior. This watchword will re-center the Church on Christ, the true Head, rather than on the denominational, local church as a building, or on a class of ministries. It is in a near future that the deflagration allowed by God as a redeeming judgment will fall on man-made institutional temples, through chaotic times and inescapable persecutions. Those will bring the Church back to the original divine intention according to the model of only one Church per city as during the first 300 years of her history. It is the only organic framework where the whole body can operate harmoniously in unity as living cells eager to be individually and corporately edified in all its parts until it attains the perfect stature of Christ.
Elijah's Anointing The preceding point coincides with a fifth and last point which arises from a need to return to the family life and pattern, as the basic cell of the Church, and comes from the promise of the Father to "turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers" (Malachi 4:6). Indeed God desires to restore fatherhood in all its dimensions, first by revealing Himself as a Father to a generation having reaped the bitter fruit of an increasingly sharp rebellion against Him and the fathers; then, by bringing the Church back to her roots: not only the faith of the saints and the martyrs of the apostolic Church, but also the chosen people, Israel. This return to the full revelation of the redeemed Body of Christ forming a solid assembly joined together as one soul is the last development of divine Restoration that no other generation has known. Truly, the four preceding pillars, return to the Word of God and the central truth of justification by grace alone by means of faith, return to sanctification and godliness with the requirement to form the Christian character and behavior, return to the power of the Spirit and His miraculous gifts, return to universal priesthood by the means of the New Testament house Church, all these already supported the House of God in the time of the apostles of the first Pentecost and have appeared in a more or less large extent in all renewal movements, although they were however emphasized in a distinct way by the Spirit, through a continued revelation throughout history. The Last Days' Great Reformation will join together these four characteristics with Elijah's anointing which will gather all the children of God for them to become the Bride prepared to meet her heavenly Bridegroom, Jesus-Christ, returning in glory, thus joining together all things into Himself. One remarkable characteristic of the prophetic Spirit is to initiate a return to Jesus-Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, so that Christ be ALL in ALL. "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself." (John 12:32). Thus, the New Reformation which we are longing and praying for can be boiled down to one watchword: TO LOVE Jesus-Christ! Let us yield ourselves to the Father's call and plunge into His inexhaustible river of Grace. As count Zinzendorf who formerly played a paramount role in that invaluable Moravian renewal which revived the passion for Christ within the Church, we wish to proclaim salvation in the following way: "To point out to every heart the loving Lamb, who died for us; to never, either in discourse or in argument, to digress even for a quarter of an hour from the loving Lamb; to name no virtue except in Him, and from Him and on His account; to preach no commandment except faith in Him; no other justification but that He atoned for us; no other sanctification but the privilege to sin no more; no other happiness but to be near Him, to think of Him and do His pleasure; no other self denial but to be deprived of Him and His blessings; no other calamity but to displease Him; no other life but in Him."
The purpose of "The Nehemiah's Prayer Watch" is to promote a New Reformation by calling the Church to a lifestyle characterized by fervent prayer and preparation to a revival of Apostolic Christianity. Our strategy is summarized with three essential axes:
The Web site of "The Nehemiah's Prayer Watch" was open in April 2004, as a foundation of the prayer ministry of ERM (Ensemble Rebâtissons la Maison). "The Nehemiah's Prayer Watch" constitutes the increased French version of the Anglophone Web site The Watchword designed by David Smithers (United States). It intends to be a gift for the Church; its existence testifies that we are willing to make the French Church benefit from spiritual jewels usually confined within the Anglo-Saxon world. "The Nehemiah's Prayer Watch", by propagating writings on revival, holiness, and prayer, originating from revivalists and great men of God of the past, seeks to kindle the revival flames in the heart of the French-speaking Church and the French Church in particular. Hence, since September 2001, the ministry "The Nehemiah's Prayer Watch" has been regularly translating from English short articles and historical extracts of writings emanating from eminent revival men or holiness preachers, which clearly define the unchanging principles of God related to prayer and revival. A range of classic works on revival is also in the process of being translated and will be propagated completely and freely in electronic version on this Web site. The selected authors were not selected on the basis of a particular theological point of view, but rather because of their deep spiritual insight in connection with the basic principles of prayer and revival. Shouldn't we long, with a burning desire and a deep sorrow, to see God acting in our own generation in revival power just as in the time of the Reformation? Can we, indeed, as the people of God, continue to neglect, without any burden and heartache, to take possession of the spiritual heritage of the French-speaking Church which has produced remarkable heroes of faith: Farel, Calvin, Théodore de Bèze, Pierre Valdo, Lefèvre d' Etaples, Olivétan, etc.? Since the Reformation, all the movements ignited by the Spirit of God have always been violently fought against in France by the forces of evil, through severe persecutions. While the Anglo-Saxon Church has been swept many times throughout history by waves of Grace, and these Great Awakenings have produced godly and devoted men of prayer who left to the following generations, by their rich writings, eternal seeds of Divine Blessing, France embraced Voltaire's ideas to enter the way of revolutions, thus closing the door to full Divine Presence for many centuries. Two different destinies have since separated the Anglo-Saxon world (the United States more particularly) and Europe with France in the center: in the former, the reality of the Kingdom of God and faith in God (certainly in a large extent apostatized today), and in the latter, the construction of the Antichrist's empire underpinned by a flood of ideas and tinted thoughts made up of irreligion, rebellion and skepticism mingled to an official constantinian religion which is reappearing today as an instrument of social peace and security and is deceiving many of the elect. But where sin abounds, grace abounds much more! "Why did not France have her Wesley? Why, on the old trunk of the huguenot reformation, one did not see an apostle emerging, leading hearts in the ways of a second reformation? The Church of the martyrs which produced Claude Brousson and Paul Rabaut, Antoine Court and Pierre Corteiz, those contemporaries of Wesley, apparently was a rather fertile ground to give birth to a French Wesley (…). However, since it did not take place in the past, the future may reserve it. "The great servants of God, professor Edouard Sayous once said, are not the property and the secrecy of England. God can make them emerge where He wants. He can give the French society a French Wesley. Oh! may he come, and, whatever the name of his Church, may he be blessed." " (Matthieu Lelièvre, "John Wesley, His Life and His Work").
ERM also owes its identity to the determining influence of spiritual giants such as Charles Finney, James Hudson Taylor, E.M. Bounds, A.W. Tozer, Leonard Ravenhill, and David Wilkerson, - and on the French side, Pierre Truschel, now in glory, only to name some of them. Those have been for us models of faith, holiness, and zeal, devoid of compromising, whose writings were like dew coming from heaven on a dry ground. "The Nehemiah's Prayer Watch" represents part of the resources that ERM places at the disposal of the French-speaking people of God to achieve the goals mentioned above. The other resources remain however held to the participating members of ERM's vision. We are finally indebted to the European Prophetic College (EPC) led by Brother Lars for the depth of the prophetic insight which it practices and which has trained us in a better understanding of God's ways according to the glorious and inimitable truth of Christ's Gospel. This man of God began his ministry in the 70's with David Wilkerson within Teen Challenge, then started the international ministry of prayer of the EPC and Intercessors Network in the 80's, just to finally make himself available for a specific call for France, made clear in late 2003 after much time spent in silence and tears since 1997. In practice, we are committed to give preeminence to the Lord Jesus-Christ in our corporate meetings, our families and our individual lives, by fervent prayer and obedience to God in love, in order to confirm in a visible way that Christ only is King and the Savior of the world. Back
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Being
aware of the gravity of the times we live in, we seek to sound
the trumpet in order to send out a prophetic call TO WATCH and
PRAY, so as to stir in the people of God a renewed ZEAL for
a diligent and sincere pursuit of the Lord, and a HUNGER and
a THIRST for a fresh and mighty outpouring of the Holy Ghost.
