I consider myself Philadelphian

I believe in seven church ages. One of the reasons the Catholic church does not bother me is because the spirit of Jezebel existed mainly in the Thyatiran time....

Ephesus - Messianic - Beginning with the Apostle to the Circumcision, Peter
Smyrna - Martyr - Beginning with the Apostle to the Un-Circumcision, Paul
Pergamos - Orthodoxy formed in this time... Pergos is a tower... Needed in the dark ages
Thyatira - Catholicism formed in this time - The ìspirit of Jezebel is to control and to dominate.
Sardis - Protestantism formed in this time- A sardius is a gem - elegant yet hard and rigid
Philadelphia - Wesleyism formed in this time - To be sanctioned is to acquire it with love.
Laodicea - Charismatic movement formed in this time - Beginning with DL Moody, the first to make money off of ministry

Candlesticks - Seven church congregations
Stars - Individuals within the congregations, all held in the right hand of Christ
Seals - The seven seals sealed each congregation within the lambs book of life

And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. - Revelation 5:4

If this interpretation is not correct why all the ado?


I consider myself product of the Philadelphian church. Especially the revival....

1. An evangelist come to town
2. Organizes a revival in a tent or a church
3. Heart felt worship service
4. Message with conviction
5. Altar service with many getting saved.

I have published my testimony here... RankinTestimony.pdf

During the time I had what I would call a good Catholic friend in high school named Bob. I am afraid I was rude to him and probably told him something to the effect that he wasn’t even saved. In this time... Are there good Catholics? If I were to meet Bob again I would have been much more friendlier, would have told him I respected his stand, and may have even went to church with him, frowning on the fact that I would not be able to take communion with him.

I also believe the Baptist church had a footing in the Philadelphian age and was blessed by many good revival-retreat growing up. I was once very active in the GARBC church and remember my pastor taking a van load of we young people north with a worried look hoping we would get something spiritual out of the meeting.

 

I miss the old revival...

1. An evangelist come to town
2. Organizes a revival in a tent or a church
3. Heart felt worship service
4. Message with conviction
5. Altar service with many getting saved.

 

Some called the experience sanctification, which I believe neighbors salvation. When they would sense the Christ they would sense the sanctification and in the words of the Apostle Paul... And they glorified God in me. - Galatians 1:24

Otherwise they would tell you to come back tomorrow night... And smile a little as they said it. I believe to pick up the experience in these methods is unique to the Philadelphian church age.

 

I don’t believe sanctification was ever well defined and universally accepted. Am I Philadelphian?

And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. - Revelation 5:4

I am aware there is a Book, and seven basic Christian movements in time, but I have no idea where my name is within that book.I believe, though, that Jesus Christ paid the price, and I believed in faith, so my salvation is secure. As far as Sanctification... it is also something also picked up in faith...

... and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. - Acts 26:18b

 

Not so! I believe the Philadelphian has strong roots in people like the English Methodist and German Moravian.

 

I don’t believe the Philadelphian church as US influenced.... But the Laodicean is! I believe we have many good ministries to arise out of Laodicea, and I am not saying it is all bad. But it is different than the Sardisean denomination and the Philadelphian revival before it.

 

The yankee way is to receive religion with no change at all in heart, All I can do is remain thankful of the methods in which I received. One night after revival in my teenage years I felt a voice say 'put the book down' while laying in bed I am like what? The voice said again 'put the book down.' When I finally put the book down the Spirit of God began to question me 'Where is all that hate, strife, and bad feelings?'

I am like... Oh my Gosh... The Holy Spirit is speaking to me too! So brothers and sisters, I am not testifying of the Lord God almighty because of reason... But because he came into my heart and communed with me. Because the conversion was genuine I have no desire but to finish my years Christian, thankful I received it in the old Philadelphian way. I have also took great delight in that teaching, even reading the complete John Bunyan (who I consider Philadelphian) library at the Va Tech library.

 

John Wesley also frowned on the direction the American Methodist were taking the church after the Revolutionary War and in a letter he writes....

LONDON
September 20, 1788


My Dear Brother:

There is, indeed, a wide difference between the relation wherein you stand to the Americans and the relation wherein I stand to all the Methodists. You are the elder brother of the American Methodists: I am under God the father of the whole family. Therefore I naturally care for you all in a manner no other persons can do. Therefore I in a measure provide for you all; for the supplies which Dr. Coke provides for you, he could not provide were it not for me, were it not that I not only permit him to collect but also support him in so doing.

But in one point, my dear brother, I am a little afraid both the Doctor and you differ from me. I study to be little: you study to be great. I creep; you strut along. I found a school: you a college! [Cokesbury College] nay, and call it after your own names! 0 beware, do not seek to be something! Let me be nothing, and "Christ be all in all!"

One instance of this, of your greatness, has given me great concern. How can you, how dare you suffer yourself to be called Bishop? I shudder, I start at the very thought! Men may call me a knave or a fool, a rascal, a scoundrel, and I am content; but they shall never by my consent call me Bishop! For my sake, for God's sake, for Christ's sake put a full end to this! Let the Presbyterians do what they please, but let the Methodists know their calling better.

Thus, my dear Franky (Francis Asbury), I have told you all that is in my heart. And let this, when I am no more seen, bear witness how sincerely I am Your affectionate friend and brother,

John Wesley

Along with John Wesley I take pleasure in that, “Men may call me a knave or a fool, a rascal, a scoundrel, and I am content!”

 

As a teenager I had fell in with my generation and that was where my care lay...

Attention
Appreciation
Acceptance

I moved in with my grandmother and ended up away from my former cares. I would end up farming and attending revivals at the local Pentecostal Holiness church. At the end of that summer we had a good revival in which the Lord seemed there in a mighty way. On reading the book, Run Baby Run, by Nikki Cruise, I felt a voice telling me to put the book down. I paused, and then continued again to read. The voice said again, Put the book down. I slept in my Grandmothers living room on an old fold away cot by the open living room door. The Katydids seemed to be singing very loud that night. There in my Grandmothers clean linens I heard the Spirit speak again, "Where is all the stress, worry and hatred?" In which, upon examining my heart, there was nothing there but pure beauty. I thought to myself. "Oh my! I got exactly what those people got!" I would spend the rest of the summer rejoicing with the people and in revival until I went back to my former environment later that September.

Spending time with what I have imagined Philadelphian type people did me a lot of good. I attended a Free Will Baptist church while going to college that fall and would teach Sunday School there as well. One evening we had a footwashing / communion service. Having never been to one my flesh fought me all the way to church that night. During the service there was such tears and shouting, wow! They would pray over you as they washed the feet and it was really a dramatic sight. It is really done decent and there is such a clean spiritual sensation afterwards as I cannot describe. I had a girl get on at my workplace with a Freewill Baptist church shirt on. I told her she was the first Freewill Baptist church member I have met since college. She said that she was looking for a good church. I told her there were no churches that observed the ordinance of foot washing around here I know of. We both agreed that bringing the ordinance of foot washing back into service would do many a lot of good and bring to life some well needed humility. After a year at the church they presented me a KJV Open Bible.

I miss many of those who got my Christian walk off to such a good start and have saved one of the sermons from the long ago...

 

This as I remember was an enjoyable read!

 

In the old US Methodist revival of the 1800's they used to have exhortation, sometimes done by exhorters, and to describe a couple of them and a camp meeting named after Asbury....

THOUGH not an old man, my memory goes back for somewhat more than half a century. The things that happened then are as clear in my mind as if they took place only yesterday. In 1854-55, or thereabouts, Brother Sullins —they did not call any preacher Doctor, except Sam'l Patton, those days—was station preacher in my native town of Jonesboro. How distinctly he stands out before me as he then was: six feet and over tall, with a great shock of coal black hair on his head, blue-grey eyes that kindled when he talked to you, and a voice that could be as caressing as a mother's and as martial as a general's on the field of battle.

My mother was a Methodist of the old pattern, and Brother Sullins was often in the home. Two of my sisters went to school to him and loved him dearly. In social life he was a charmer, often breaking out into mirthful stories. Now and then he did not hesitate to play the boy. But for the scruples of his flock, I am sure he would have been glad on the frosty October mornings to follow the hounds after a fox; for the breath of the country was in his nostrils. He was even then a wonderful preacher; at least there was one little boy in his congregation that thought so. But I loved best to hear him exhort and sing. Once in the midst of a great revival, he came down out of the pulpit, his arms outstretched, the tears streaming from his eyes, and walked up and down the aisles, beseeching his hearers to accept Christ. There was nothing studied in it, and the spontaneity of it thrilled me. I wonder if he dreamed how much he was stirring my childish heart. And how he could sing! There were no choirs in those days, and he did not need one, as he was entirely competent to "set and carry" any tune. Now and then he would sing a solo before the morning service, usually one of the great old Methodist hymns; but occasionally something new. When he went away, everybody was sorry; the whole town was devoted to him. It was a long, long time ago! One whole generation has since passed into eternity, and a large part of another. But in the providence of God, Brother Sullins—now and for many years Doctor Sullins—still lingers with us; the old man eloquent of the Holston Conference, every man's friend and the friend of every man. More than four score years have passed over his head. He has been preacher, teacher, soldier. A few years ago, at the urgent request of many friends, he began to write some reminiscences of his early life for publication in The Midland Methodist. He will not be offended when I say that even those who knew him best were surprised at the facility with which he used his pen. They had recognized him as an almost incomparable orator, but that very fact had perhaps blinded them to his other gifts. Anyhow the reminiscences were eagerly read, with a constant demand for more. Ever since the series ended there has been a succession of inquiries as to whether they would not be put into a book. And here they are! From New River to Lookout Mountain, they will be read again and again, often with tears and sometimes with laughter. I take great pleasure in introducing them to the general public. - EE Hoss - Nashville, TN, 1910, of the old Methodist preacher, David Sullins

The Life of George Clark Rankin and beginning on page 239... I passed my examinations and that year I was sent to the Wytheville Station and Circuit. That was adjoining my former charge. We reached the old parsonage on the pike just out of Wytheville as Rev. B. W. S. Bishop moved out. Charley Bishop was then a little tow-headed boy. He is now the learned Regent of Southwestern University. The parsonage was an old two-and-a-half-story structure with nine rooms and it looked a little like Hawthorne's house with the seven gables. It was the lonesomest-looking old house I ever saw. There was no one there to meet us, for we had not notified anybody of the time we would arrive.

Think of taking a young bride to that sort of a mansion! But she was brave and showed no sign of disappointment. That first night we felt like two whortleberries in a Virginia tobacco wagonbed. We had room and to spare, but it was scantily furnished with specimens as antique as those in Noah's ark. But in a week or so we were invited out to spend the day with a good family, and when we went back we found the doors fastened just as we had left them, but when we entered a bedroom was elegantly furnished with everything modern and the parlor was in fine shape. The ladies had been there and done the work. How much does the preacher owe to the good women of the Church!

The circuit was a large one, comprising seventeen appointments. They were practically scattered all over the county. I preached every other day, and never less than twice and generally three times on Sunday.

I had associated with me that year a young collegemate, Rev. W. B. Stradley. He was a bright, popular fellow, and we managed to give Wytheville regular Sunday preaching. Stradley became a great preacher and died a few years ago while pastor of Trinity Church, Atlanta, Georgia. We were true yokefellows and did a great work on that charge, held fine revivals and had large ingatherings.

The famous Cripple Creek Campground was on that work. They have kept up campmeetings there for more than a hundred years. It is still the great rallying point for the Methodists of all that section. I have never heard such singing and preaching and shouting anywhere else in my life. I met the Rev. John Boring there and heard him preach. He was a well-known preacher in the conference; original, peculiar, strikingly odd, but a great revival preacher.

One morning in the beginning of the service he was to preach and he called the people to prayer. He prayed loud and long and told the Lord just what sort of a meeting we were expecting and really exhorted the people as to their conduct on the grounds. Among other things, he said we wanted no horse- trading and then related that just before kneeling he had seen a man just outside the encampment looking into the mouth of a horse and he made such a peculiar sound as he described the incident that I lifted up my head to look at him, and he was holding his mouth open with his hands just as the man had done in looking into the horse's mouth! But he was a man of power and wrought well for the Church and for humanity.

The rarest character I ever met in my life I met at that campmeeting in the person of Rev. Robert Sheffy, known as "Bob" Sheffy. He was recognized all over Southwest Virginia as the most eccentric preacher of that country. He was a local preacher; crude, illiterate, queer and the oddest specimen known among preachers. But he was saintly in his life, devout in his experience and a man of unbounded faith. He wandered hither and thither over that section attending meetings, holding revivals and living among the people. He was great in prayer, and Cripple Creek campground was not complete without "Bob" Sheffy. They wanted him there to pray and work in the altar.

He was wonderful with penitents. And he was great in following up the sermon with his exhortations and appeals. He would sometimes spend nearly the whole night in the straw with mourners; and now and then if the meeting lagged he would go out on the mountain and spend the entire night in prayer, and the next morning he would come rushing into the service with his face all aglow shouting at the top of his voice. And then the meeting always broke loose with a floodtide.

He could say the oddest things, hold the most unique interviews with God, break forth in the most unexpected spasms of praise, use the homeliest illustrations, do the funniest things and go through with the most grotesque performances of any man born of woman.

It was just "Bob" Sheffy, and nobody thought anything of what he did and said, except to let him have his own way and do exactly as he pleased. In anybody else it would not have been tolerated for a moment. In fact, he acted more like a crazy man than otherwise, but he was wonderful in a meeting. He would stir the people, crowd the mourner's bench with crying penitents and have genuine conversions by the score. I doubt if any man in all that conference has as many souls to his credit in the Lamb's Book of Life as old "Bob" Sheffy.

At the close of that year in casting up my accounts I found that I had received three hundred and ninety dollars for my year's work, and the most of this had been contributed in everything except money. It required about the amount of cash contributed to pay my associate and the Presiding Elder. I got the chickens, the eggs, the butter, the ribs and backbones, the corn, the meat, and the Presiding Elder and Brother Stradley had helped us to eat our part of the quarterage. Well, we kept open house and had a royal time, even if we did not get much ready cash. We lived and had money enough to get a good suit of clothes and to pay our way to conference. What more does a young Methodist preacher need or want? We were satisfied and happy, and these experiences are not to be counted as unimportant assets in the life and work of a Methodist circuit rider.

Note- The Bob Jones made a movie about Robert Sheffey.