Five Fifteen Articles

The Following Article is from the Assembly of God News Service

Submitted May 30,1998

TEEN CHALLENGE FOUNDER SHARES MESSAGES OF HOPE AND CONCERN WITH ASSEMBLIES OF GOD MINISTERS AND LAITY

The Rev. David Wilkerson, founder of Teen Challenge, the internationally recognized Christian ministry to those battling substance abuse, was a featured speaker at the Assemblies of God's Ministerial Enrichment Conference held this week in Springfield, Mo.

Wilkerson spoke Monday night during the opening service of the conference to a capacity crowd at Central Assembly of God. His message, "The Glory of God," was taken from Isaiah 40:5: "And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it."

Wilkerson described his own search for God's glory while pastoring the non-denominational Times Square Church that now ministers to more than 100 nationalities in New York City. He discovered that God's glory is "not a manifestation, it is a revelation. It is a truth. It is God the I AM explaining the I AM."

More specifically, God's glory is "a revelation of who God is in Christ. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of the glory of God."

"I want more than anything else," Wilkerson stressed, "for everybody who sits under this ministry to know the glory of Christ. To know that when they sin they don't have to run and hide from Him. They don't have to live in guilt and fear. They need to turn around and go to the Cross and know that there is forgiveness and they can rise by faith.

"I want to know that every time they praise the Lord in Times Square Church it comes out of a heart that is overflowing with worship for what Jesus has done in their life. His forgiving, healing power. I don't want them to live under guilt and fear and condemnation. And if they're going through a battle I want them to hold steady in Christ and know that He's long-suffering. And if they'll just hold on and turn to Him and seek Him with all of their heart, God will be patient with them until the victory comes."

Wilkerson was careful in his message to draw the line between the blessing of God's patience and human disregard for the consequences of sin.

"God helping me," he said of his own ministry, "I will not rebuke the righteous, and by God's grace, offer no comfort to a man or woman who is not ready to accept His grace and lay their sin down."

Ministering in New York City, Wilkerson has seen firsthand glaring examples of both God's grace and the human tendency to take that grace for granted. He spoke of 12-year-old girls selling their bodies in prostitution and then being convicted by the message of the gospel within Times Square Church. And he described Gay Pride parades bringing tens of thousands of homosexuals to the streets of the city in defiance and the Statue of Liberty having colored lights reflected off of it in honor of Gay Pride.

Wilkerson spoke to the employees of the Assemblies of God Headquarters in their Tuesday chapel service. He described how the true gospel is being dangerously polluted in many corners of the church world.

In his message, "The Gospel of Accommodation," Wilkerson described a gospel that is willing "to adapt, to make suitable and acceptable. To make convenient. And there is a gospel of accommodation that is creeping into the United States of America."

He warned that this approach to biblical truth is sweeping the nation and influencing ministers of every denomination.

"It's giving birth to megachurches with thousands who come to hear a non-confrontational message. It's an adaptable gospel that is spoon-fed through humorous skits and through drama and short, non-abrasive, 20-minute sermonettes on how to cope. It's called 'seeker-friendly' or 'sinner-friendly' gospel. I find those terms anti-scriptural to begin with. The gospel has always been confrontational. There is no such thing as a friendly gospel. There is a friendly grace, but there is a gospel that confronts sin," he said.

Wilkerson restated the warning of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:4 against messengers who bring "another gospel," and he pointed out the apostle's clear statement that Satan is behind such false gospels: "For Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness" (verses 14,15).

"I tremble," Wilkerson said, "when I read in the Scripture that it is possible that Satan in the last days will come right into the church. He's going to come and pose as an angel of light and he's going to take ministers who at one time had the touch of God and he's going to transform them into angels of light and they're going to become his tool of deception. I find that frightening. It causes me to fall on my face before God."

"People don't like to hear what I'm talking about anymore," Wilkerson admitted. "They don't want to hear the gloom and the doom. But we're headed toward those perilous times. We're just a few years away from a collapse like the world has never known. And one of these days, when that happens, all those who preached prosperity will disappear because the people will say, 'Your gospel has failed me.' When that time comes, I want to grasp on Jesus, and I want everyone that I've preached to to have a faith in the keeping power of Jesus Christ and I want them to know Him in His fullness. And I want to know that I've done it in love, I've done it in grace, but that they know the difference between the holy and the profane."

Wilkerson's concluding message Tuesday night at Central Assembly focused on God's complete provision for all who will trust in Him. Entitling his sermon "Keeping the Sabbath," Wilkerson read from Jeremiah 17:24,25,27 God's promise to bless or to punish depending on His people's willingness to honor the Sabbath.

"Now, hold steady," Wilkerson told his audience, "I'm not going into some legal pattern."

Wilkerson's message was not a call for legalism. Rather, he went on to connect Jeremiah's prophecies with Christ. Jeremiah, like the other Old Testament prophets, decried the Israelites' bearing burdens on the Sabbath. Mule trains of goods from the ancient caravan routes came to Jerusalem to promote commerce on the Sabbath. Wilkerson figuratively connected these literal burdens with the pain and heartache humanity carries. God, through Christ, has made a way for every burden to be lifted from the human heart. The Old Testament Sabbath laws pointed toward Christ's New Testament fulfillment of the Law.

"When we get to heaven, we're going to realize when we backtrack and look back that it was all about Jesus all along. Everything was Jesus. Everything was Christ," Wilkerson said.

From before the world's creation, God's plan was in place to send Christ as our "burden bearer." That mission was successfully completed at Calvary. The challenge for every believer is not just to accept salvation by faith, but to completely trust Christ with all of life's burdens.

"You preach in your congregations, don't you, that your people are to cast all their cares upon the Lord because 'he cares for you'?" Wilkerson asked the ministers in his audience. "And then you pick up all your own burdens and go back and sweat. We don't practice what we preach."

Because of the Cross, Wilkerson said, we are living in a day of rest when God commands us not to bear our burdens.

"Don't you know you're in the Sabbath?" Wilkerson pleaded. "Don't you know you're not supposed to carry any burdens? The Lord will not share your burden. If you want to carry it, He'll let you carry it until you get down with it. It will bring you right to the ground. Then the Lord will take it. He will not take one end of your burden; He has to have it all or nothing!"

Wilkerson shared from his own experience in the difficult ministry environment of New York City. "I almost died from carrying burdens," he said. "I developed colitis and almost died over it. Until the Lord said, 'You've got it all wrong. You go that way and it's going to kill you.'"

Wilkerson discovered the solution was straightforward. "It's not an option. If I'm going to obey His Word, I'm going to believe that every burden that comes upon me, immediately I am to lay hold of this--I am in His Sabbath. I will not carry this burden. If He can't handle it, what am I going to do with it?"

"I serve a God," Wilkerson proclaimed, "who says, 'You don't have to worry about the economy. You don't have to worry about your family. You don't have to worry about your church or your health or anything else.' Every burden that comes at you from the enemy to try to keep you from having a clear mind and a simple, childlike faith in Jesus, lay it down! Take control of it and say, 'Lord, I'm living in the Sabbath. I'm living in Jubilee. I'm going to walk in my life free!'"

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