Where Is the Power?: Moving Beyond What the Church Has Lost

By Bishop Howard A. Robinson Jr.

Bishop Howard A. Robinson, Jr. cuts to the heart of the matter, as to what has been lost in the present day church. The present day church has lost its power to sin. We are witnessing the evidence of sin all around us as never before: sin in the church, sin in our community and sin in our homes. Bishop Robinson proposes a present day spiritual engine tune up using biblical principles as a viable remedy for eradicating the effects of sin upon our lives, and as a vehicle for Moving beyond what the church has Lost. Without question the church needs an overhaul. The answer of how to redeem what we have lost as a church can be found in the pages of this extraordinary message of hope!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450059558

Bishop Howard A. Robinson Jr.

Apostle Howard A. Robinson Jr. is one who has been raised around the world and served in ministry in many countries of our world. He serves as the chief apostle / presiding bishop of Agape Christian Fellowship International in twenty-three countries around the world. He is experienced in all phases of ministry and comes with a wealth of experiences from his forty-plus years of ministry. Apostle Robinson brings to the reader deep understanding of the Word of God and life experience from both conservative and liberal perspective. He has formal training from different Christian schools, having earned bachelor, master of divinity, and doctor of ministry degrees in Bible literature and theology. If your desire is to receive uncompromised understanding of spiritual truth and reality of supernatural reality beyond the traditional Christian experience, it will do you well to read this book.

Book preview

Contents

Chapters

Engine Checkup

What Is Our Diagnosis?

The Church’s Failures

State Church

Christmas

Easter

Church Division

Personal Perspective

Solution

What Does God Want?

A Third Day Church Functioning in Ascension Gift Ministries

Ministering Under an Open Heaven

DEDICATION

I want to dedicate this book to those who are hungry for more of God. To those who desire to move beyond the mundane of the flesh and justification of all that God never told us to do, in order for us to say that He is with us when He is really not.

I want to dedicate this book to those who realize that this time is the last time for us to get it right, realizing that we walk in the last day and that there will never be another time like the present to allow God’s glory to be manifest in the earth like this time.

I dedicate this work to my wife, Evelyn, who endured many late nights with my absence, while I sought to hear from the Holy Spirit the things that would challenge me to a deeper walk with God. I love you dearly.

Lastly, I would like to thank my Heavenly Father who constantly reminds me of His unfailing love for me and encourages me to move to the next level within Him, who is my all in all. My life, my joy, and my sustenance during my journey through this earthly existence on my way home to heaven.

And he said to me, Son of man, do you see what they are doing—the utterly detestable things the house of Israel is doing here, things that will drive me far from my sanctuary? But you will see things that are even more detestable.

—Ezek. 8:6 NIV

Forward

It is profoundly amazing to me that in such a time of desperation and tumultuous peril in the land, that there is an omnipresent God who is still speaking softly, gently, lovingly to a people who will listen especially at such a time as this. He may speak through Radio, Television, or Books. I would like to call attention to readers, regarding to a book written by Bishop Howard Robinson. This book is more than what the cover implies. It is not a guide for the faint hearted, but a passageway for courageous theologians, and those who are seeking to be one in Christ.

The name of this book, WHERE IS THE POWER? MOVING BEYOND WHAT THE CHURCH HAS LOST.

As has been stated before, this book is more than what the cover implies. It will require commitment, compassion, and strength on the part of the reader and is intended to uplift and inspire all people, believers, and nonbelievers. I think it is a universal cry for the church family, from all ages.

This world has its heroes for each decade; this is the decade where the world needs its ministers. The Apostle, the Prophets, the Evangelist, the Pastors and Teachers. For the equipping of the saints for the work of this ministry. In order that we may all come into the unity of the faith, and that is why I think we need to read this book. I have known Bishop Robinson for more than forty years. And in those forty years, he has been proclaiming the Word of God without compromise. He is not only a National Gospel Preacher, but he is an International Preacher.

He is a man, along with his wife Evelyn, who nurtures and loves unconditionally, they are people who have proven themselves by their own life that all things are possible when proper belief in God is exercised. I have concluded that they have been called with a purpose for such a time as this, to bring reconciliation and restoration for many of our fallen down churches. I also conclude that this couple have extended love to churches, of every denomination, to ethnic groups, religious affiliation, and social status. They live their belief, which must emanate from God’s own Heart.

Bishop A.L. Hardy, Th. D.

Introduction

Bishop Howard A. Robinson, Jr. cuts to the heart of the matter, as to what has been lost in the present day church. The present day church has lost its power to sin. We are witnessing the evidence of sin all around us as never before: sin in the church, sin in our community and sin in our homes. Bishop Robinson proposes a present day spiritual engine tune up using biblical principles as a viable remedy for eradicating the effects of sin upon our lives, and as a vehicle for Moving beyond what the church has Lost. Without question the church needs an overhaul. The answer of how to redeem what we have lost as a church can be found in the pages of this extraordinary message of hope!

Prophetess Valinda Ala’Chappelle-Norman

Engine Checkup

One summer, I made a visit to Columbus, Ohio, the city of my birth, for a family reunion. While there, I rode in the vehicle of one of my relatives. As the vehicle moved down the road, one could hear it sputter and vibrate. The driver complained of the poor gas mileage they received from the vehicle. I proceeded to ask the question, When was the last time they had your vehicle serviced? The reply was, It has been several years. I then said, It has a right to be dysfunctional.

The thought penetrated my mind and touched my spirit. I then found myself reflecting on the Word of God where I heard the words of Paul to his son in ministry, Titus, found in Titus 1:5,

For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you.

(NKJV)

I heard God share with me that even as a car needs to be tuned, to perform at its peak potential, even so, the church must undergo a periodic checkup, for it to be functional and maintain its potency and its divine favor. Paul told Titus that he should "set in order, the things that were lacking . . . Here we have a first-century church, established by the apostle, which has arrived at the place where it was in need of Titus coming and tweaking the engine" (so to speak) in order for it to function as God would have it to function, within the kingdom of God. If the early church needed to have its purpose and function checked and brought into line with the will of God, in less than one century of existence, then we need to understand that the church’s failure to be corrected and brought into order by the apostles is way over due in the church of today.

It was over one thousand years later, the church found herself caught up in compromise between the true faith and the pagan religions of the day. The church found herself engaged in the buying and selling of indulgences (supposedly to buy the forgiveness of sins and/or to buy one’s deceased relatives out of purgatory). It was a time when religious leaders were as corrupt as those who were in the world. Priests were having children outside of marital relationships, having kept women to fulfill their fleshly needs, and many other sins. It was a time when God sent a Martin Luther to lead a reformation of the church, because of the strong need for an order that reflected the kingdom of God more than the kingdoms of this world and pagan religions. The church needed to be brought back in line with the divine will of God.

Well, here we are today, almost a thousand years later; and we find the church in need of a major overhaul. We seemingly have lost the whole purpose on why God called the church into existence. We have replaced His will for ritual. We have transformed His desire for relationship into a need for religious function and duty. Where the church started out as one in which the people had all things in common, it has now become a hodgepodge of what is reported to be over thirty thousand denominations with branches where you can get what you want and feel comfortable, just as you are. We have become more concerned with pleasing the masses than we are with pleasing God. We are more concerned with coming in line with the will of the people than we are with coming in line with the will of God, found in His written word, the Holy Bible.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.

(Gal. 1:6-10 NIV)

On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts. You know we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed—God is our witness. We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else.

(1 Thess. 2:4-6 NIV)

As a result of this gross deficiency, the church has become impotent and has very little resemblance to the first-century church, where God’s power was so greatly manifest, to the point that they turned the world upside down.

I believe that we are living in a time when we can find God doing either of two things, dependent upon where we are as His representatives in the earth:

1.    We can find ourselves continuing to do our own thing in His name and establishing our own little kingdoms using His authority and find the ancient words of 2 Kings 21:13-15 coming true in our lives, to our surprise, because we believe that God will not judge us, because we belong to Him.

And I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab; I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. So I will forsake the remnant of My inheritance and deliver them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become victims