Faith: How to Please God and Move Mountains

By Brenton Williams

Faith. Without it we can’t please God.

But what is it? Where does it come from? How can we get more of it?

This book aims to answer those questions and many others. It’s a handbook for understanding and cultivating faith. You will learn where faith comes from and what to do with it.

All the great people of the Bible were people of faith. It’s the one characteristic that makes them stand out. Modern believers can be like them. Faith is for everyone, not just the few.

The concepts in this book will grow your Christian life, fit you into God’s plan, and help you please God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brenton Williams
• Release date: Oct 12, 2020

Brenton Williams

Brenton Williams was born in 1947 to non-christian parents and, apart from attending a local Sunday School, had no Christian faith or beliefs.He met his wife, Coral, in 1970 who was a member of The Salvation Army and converted that year. He joined The Salvation Army as a member and in 1975 felt a call from God to full-time ministry. He and his wife trained and became Salvation Army Officers for 11 years moving around New Zealand to various posts.His search for truth led him to question some of the tenets of the Army and in 1984 he left The Salvation Army to start a small charismatic group where he still ministers today.The truths in his books are based on first-hand experience and a desire to discover a real and true faith. Central to that is a close and intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ. His heart desire is to help other believers come to know Jesus as a friend and lover and thereby prepare them for an eternity of wedded bliss with their chosen bridegroom.

Book preview

Wineskins -- The two churches at the end of time

Brenton Williams

Copyright © 2020 by Brenton Williams

All rights reserved, including translation. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, electronic, mechanical, electrostatic photocopying, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the permission of Brenton Williams.

Published by Brenton Williams,

IAA35/25 Graham Street,

Petone,

Wellington 5012,

New Zealand.

Unless otherwise stated, scriptures are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishers. All rights reserved worldwide.

Distributed by Smashwords

Edited by Paul Corrigan's Editing Works!

Cover artwork by Stefan Jurczenko.

Ebook formatting by ebooklaunch.com

ISBN: 978-0-473-53592-6

Contents

1. Old and new

2. The Wineskins

3. Where is she?

4. Two churches

5. Structure

6. Worship

7. Two covenants

8. Doomed to failure

9. A new deal

10. The new church

11. Preaching

12. Preaching’s source

13. Festivals

14. Sunday School or Children’s Church

15. Losing my religion

16. My pet peeve

17. Spookiness

18. De-mystifying Jesus

19. One church

20. The other church

21. God’s neat trick

22. What we can do

23. John’s Revelation

Other books by Brenton Williams

Chapter 1

Old and new

During his time on earth Jesus said many interesting things. Some were contained in the stories we know as parables. Those stories generally illustrated a point Jesus wanted to make. A bit like Aesop’s fables his stories always had a moral point or explained a concept. The Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Mustard Seed, and the Wheat and Tares are some of them. They have all become classics and helped believers in every generation.

In addition to stories Jesus put important truths into simple sentences. We’re going to look at a couple of those in this book. It was just after Jesus called a tax collector, Levi, to follow him that we find the verses we’re looking for. Levi must have been excited about his calling because he threw a big party. He invited many of his friends who also happened to be tax collectors. Jews hated tax collectors because they worked for the Roman rulers. Their presence at the party upset the Pharisees and teachers of the law and they complained about the people Jesus dined with [Mark 2:15-17].

After some verbal exchanges Jesus said this: ‘No-one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no-one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no-one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’ ’ [Luke 5:36-39]

No-one uses wineskins these days. Winemakers store wine in barrels and then decant it into bottles. In Biblical times wine was stored into wineskins. A wineskin was made from the skin of an animal - usually a goat or a sheep - and the wine placed in it was left to mature until it was ready for drinking.

New wine always went into new wineskins. That’s because new wine still had a small amount of fermentation to complete. Once sealed in the wineskin the wine would finish its fermentation. The by-product of the fermentation was carbon dioxide gas. That gas would stretch the wineskin. A new skin would hold the wine and the gas comfortably - it had enough elasticity to cope with the pressure. An old wineskin would burst from the gas build-up. If that happened the wine was lost.

No winemaker in those days put new wine in old wineskins. They had learned the lesson many times that the old and the new don’t mix. Wineskins could be used several times to store old wine but if someone put new wine in them both the wineskin and the wine would be ruined.

So, why did Jesus speak about wineskins at Levi’s feast? I believe he was looking into the future and seeing the start of the new church that was to start after his death and resurrection. That church would be fizzing as believers responded to the gospel, had their sins forgiven, and found new life. And that’s the picture we see in the Acts of the Apostles.

Wham! The Day of Pentecost launched something new onto the spiritual scene. Thousands became believers and found new life. You can almost feel the excitement as those early believers discovered what church life was like. Here’s what the record says:

‘They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.’ [Acts 2:42-47]

Doesn’t that sound exciting? Can’t you just feel the vibes of something new? Nothing like this had ever happened before. God poured out his Spirit and the result was new spiritual wine bubbling and fizzing with life.

The disciples must have remembered what Jesus said at Levi’s party because they didn’t take the new church back into the old one. They used the temple precincts to teach the new believers but they didn’t make them carry out the requirements of the law. They knew that the new wine of the Christian church would not go well in the old wineskin of Judaism. The two just wouldn’t mix.

How true that proved to be. A short time after Pentecost the Pharisees and Sadducees arrested and imprisoned Peter and John. They didn’t like them preaching about the resurrection [Acts 4:2-4]. After telling them not to preach and teach in the name of Jesus and warning them that there would be consequences if they did they let them go. That didn’t stop the disciples from continuing to preach the gospel and baptise those who believed.

We can learn something else from what happened to the disciples. Just as the new wine of Christianity won’t fit in the old wineskin of Judaism so the old religious structure will always persecute the new. The Jewish church persecuted the Christian church. That pushed the gospel out to the gentiles. Then the old pagan church persecuted the new Christian church. Believers perished in the Colosseum as entertainment for Roman crowds.

When something new happens in the church the old establishment opposes it.

Old and new don’t mix when it comes to spiritual matters.

In his apostolic ministry Paul always went to the synagogue when he arrived in a new town. There he would preach the gospel until forced to leave and preach only to the gentiles [Acts 18:1-6]. The old, established Jewish religion couldn’t tolerate the new Christian faith. That happened everywhere Paul and other missionaries went with the gospel message.

You would think that the Jews would have welcomed the gospel and the new believers. They had suffered greatly for generations and had only one hope to cling to - that a deliverer was coming. Paul carried news of that deliverer but Jesus didn’t fit the picture the Jews had conjured up. They wanted a physical deliverer who would overthrow their masters and raise the Jews to greatness. The gospel offered spiritual deliverance and that didn’t fit the religious idea.

New wine in old wineskins. It was never going to work. The new wine needed a new wineskin. What would that new wineskin look like? Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:22-33 [bold added]:

‘Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church — for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.’

Although this passage is about husbands and wives it is also about Jesus and the church. Paul makes that plain towards the end. The new wineskin is a person and she’s female.

Chapter 2

The wineskins

Let’s now look at the types of wineskin