The Chastisement of Sons - Part 4

Joseph Herrin (04-02-2012)

I thought it would be good to share some testimonies from others regarding the subject of Yahweh’s chastisement of His sons and daughters. We are at a time when Yahweh must purge, purify and refine His people. The bride must be made ready for the return of the Bridegroom. If you are to be part of the bride, you will be disciplined that you might share in God’s holiness.

The church does not focus on such things in this hour. There are multitudes of carnal saints who have heaped up to them ministers to tell them the things they want to hear. They sit and listen to smooth words of ease, comfort and prosperity. The flesh is not discomfited, and the ministers are careful to keep it that way so the numbers in attendance will swell and the offerings will continue to come in. Just listen to Joel Osteen preach. He has the largest church in the land. Pick ANY of his sermons. Your flesh will not be the least bit troubled. You will hear only smooth and pleasant things.

If you abide under such preachers you may have ease and comfort, but you will not be prepared on that day when you must stand before Christ.

Malachi 3:2-3
“But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like launderers' soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to Yahweh an offering in righteousness.”

The following testimony by Boris Sorokovsky speaks of a son receiving discipline from the Father. What follows is an excerpt taken from a much longer testimony that can be read online.

http://www.heart4god.ws/id474.htm

I can relate very well to this word, for I have often been disciplined. The marks of sonship are on my body. They are marks of love.

May you be blessed with peace and understanding in these days.

A Testimony by Boris Sorokovsky

So, just to make a long story short, our people have repeated most of the experiences of the Israelites when they were brought to the promised land. And I was one of them. We were young people yet. I was 18 when we came to Australia. We were young and full of life and energy. We were working in the church very hard, we were busy up to here, but then slowly we saw what happened. Brethren took care with building one house, then two houses, then two jobs. Then they sent their wives to work to get more dollars and better carpets and this and that. And before you know it, they had all caught up in the materialistic efforts.

So, the prayer life went and it was replaced by meetings and conferences and this and that, and church activities. And I was busy in it at length. Yet the Lord in his mercy, He was calling. He sent his prophets to my family and the Lord rebuked me and told me to repent. And to start searching the Scriptures and turn to the narrow way.

The Lord was warning me personally several times in Australia. But I had no time to search the Scriptures, I was busy doing church work. I was busy supposedly doing God’s work. I was an ordained minister, I was the church secretary, I was the youth director, I was doing this and that, I was leading the choir, I was doing the printing, things like that. I was busy, I had no time for prayer. I had no time for repentance, I had no time for the Word of God.

So finally, the Lord caught up with me in Canada. Of course Canada is even more plentiful than Australia. So we had a big farm and we got in big debt. I was working eight hours on the farm, and then eight hours in construction. I’m a carpenter by trade. We were trying to really make a big dollar very fast, sixteen hours a day, trying to really get going in this country of Canada.

Then the Lord sent me the last warning. He sent a prophet from another city. A person who was still walking close to the Lord. He brought the person from far off. Then as we prayed at night, the Lord told me specific things I was guilty of, like being very worldly. And the Lord, after telling the secrets of my heart, gave me the last warning, a stern warning to repent. If not, God was going to judge me. And then that person went away. I find that in the Bible. The Lord sent prophets of old to nations, to individuals, to warn them and call them to repent. I find that Biblical. And even today, God is a living God, He is still on the throne. He can still rebuke his people and call them to repent. The same living God who was working in Russia and China is still living in America and Canada and all over the world, if we are only willing to believe the Bible.

After that I still was very busy. That didn’t help. Then one night the Lord showed me a vision. I was walking on a broad road, a very wide road. It was going downhill and getting darker and darker.
Then I could see it turn to the left a bit. And I saw myself walking down that road. And I understood that was the broad road to hell. Even with me doing all the church work that I did, it didn’t matter to the Lord. I was walking on the broad road because I loved the world and was living, more or less, my own way, doing my own will. I had no time for prayer and searching the Scriptures like they did in Apostolic days. They were in prayer daily. They sought the face of the Lord. They were sent by the Holy Ghost. They did the will of the Holy Ghost. We read that Peter was sent certain places by the Holy Ghost.

Phillip was sent by the Holy Ghost different places. Phillip left a revival in Samaria and went to an empty road. Who did it? The Holy Ghost told him to go. God told him to go to that empty road. The work of the Lord was done.

Look at the Apostle Paul and Barnabas. While they were fasting and praying the Lord sent them out to the mission field. It was not the Acts of the Apostles, but the Acts of the Holy Ghost, as I read in my Bible. But this is the problem. When people start to depart from the Lord, they begin to replace those works of the Holy Ghost with their own works. With their own supposed program and so on. So the Lord did not care how busy I was in the church work, like in many churches today.

Man-made programs. They’re so busy with missions, with printing, with radio, with this and that. But they lost their prayer life. There’s no prayers in the churches, no prayers in the houses. There’s no real Bible- like presence of the Lord. There’s no real Bible-like working of the Holy Spirit in churches today. Why? Because the churches are asleep today in America and Canada. And I was one of them.

The Lord had mercy on me. He showed me that vision, and then there was a voice. As I saw myself walking down that road there was a voice coming down that said if I would just keep on walking down that road and proceed around the corner, that would be a point of no return for me. And then I saw myself throw my hands in the air and cry out, "Have mercy on me Lord!" And then I turned around, and it was finished.

That was the final warning for my life. Because I had several warnings in Australia, and one very stern warning and call to repentance and to go back to the narrow way. And the narrow way, brethren, is a narrow way. I’m going to share it with you briefly. lt’s a really narrow way, if you want to taste it.

It was a very narrow way for Christ and the Apostles. If you want to mean business with God, it will become a really narrow way, here in America and Canada. But many people will not want to pay the price of the narrow way, in the churches.

So, the next day I should have been killed. God planned to judge me, but it was the mercy of God that saved me. I was working on a steep roof. We were building cottage homes and A-frames, me and my brother. It was already getting close to winter time. Sometimes there was snow on the roof. We were roofing with shingles on a very steep A-frame roof. We were young and strong and very able and smart, and we were working like a couple of monkeys on the roof. So we did not build scaffolds like carpenters normally do around the house. We just nailed 2x4’s on the edge of the roof like that, which is only an inch and a half wide. And we would walk on those, running back and forth doing the roof work, shingling.

And of course we would have a pile of shingles here on a rope and we would pull them up as we would go up the roof. And then we’d nail another 2x4 on and walk on it. One morning we started and it was quite slippery. There was snow on it. I was working along, and it was quite high on that roof, it was a two-story. When I turned to take some shingles, my foot slipped, and I was falling back with my face front- ways. The owner of that lot which we were building for, for some reason, I don’t know why he did it, but he cut all the trees around that lot, and he left stumps about four or five feet high. When we cut down trees in British Columbia, we cut the stumps very low. I don’t know why he left them high.

Maybe it was specifically for me. When I slipped and I saw I was falling right onto one of those stumps with my face and my chest, all I can remember is I cried, "Lord, have mercy on me!" And I had my hands up like I saw myself in the vision. And then I remember no more. I struck that stump with the full force of my chest, here. And by the law of physics, with that height and my weight, I should have been killed. I should have been pierced. It was only the mercy of God and a miracle of God that I was still alive. I passed out and my brother told me he dropped down and looked at me, and he said I didn’t have signs of life. He called the ambulance and took me to the hospital. When they x- rayed me there was just a big black spot here, but no ribs were broken, nothing was damaged inside.

And so l knew it was only the mercy of the Lord, a miracle, that saved me from death. It was his last warning, his last call to me to repent and to come on the narrow way. That was a turning point for my family. God told us to go into the Word and prayer daily. So we started morning prayers and started searching the word of God in the morning for hours or more and in the night for quite a long time.

And the Lord told us to repent of many things. As we searched the Word we found out what we were guilty of. Then, after we repented, and only then, the Lord started to talk to us personally. The Lord started to talk to us in visions, in dreams, with voice, and with other means as He talked in the Bible, instructing us and teaching us and correcting us, bringing us to that narrow way, that narrow walk.

Then we found out that the Christian life is not just a life of going to church, just dropping a dollar on the plate. It will involve all of your life, inside and out. It will involve your wallet, it will involve everything. It will involve your insides, your pride, your haughtiness. It will touch your tongue, it will touch your tastes in life, it will touch your likings, it will touch your habits, the whole inner life it will touch.

The Lord told us also that it has to touch the outside. Many preachers say, "Oh, I’m saved, praise God, I’m filled with the Holy Ghost, and it doesn’t matter how we look outside." No. It’s the preaching of the devil. Just read the New Testament and find out. There’s a strict commandment from the Lord, that we are living epistles being read of all men. Men do not read our hearts. They say, "We are under grace, we are not under law. Therefore it doesn’t matter how we appear outside, as long as you are pure in heart, it doesn’t matter."

But yes it matters. It’s a commandment of the Lord in the New Testament. The Lord has told us by revelations also that it is his will, that we better change the outside. So we had to clean our house of many things, of worldly things. We had to change our garments, my wife had to change her garments.

Myself also, and our children. It had been no problem for our daughter to walk around in miniskirts. Why? Our daughter was 11 and 12 when we came to Canada. It was no big thing, everybody does it. In America everybody claims the Holy Ghost is in their churches, supposedly, that they have Apostolic churches, they believe in the Lord, they believe in the Holy Ghost, God is with them, and they say they are on their way to heaven, that they could be raptured any time. That’s the claim of the churches.

But I find in the word of God that yes, we are saved by grace, that is true. But we are saved by grace for the holy works, for the holy deeds, for the holy life, for a life of righteousness, a life of separation from this world and the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes. So, my wife also had to find a covering for her, which flew away in this free world. I had to change my garments, she had to also. And the Lord showed us what it is: we had to be separate from the world inside and out.
[End Excerpt]

Heart4God Website: http://www.heart4god.ws    

Parables Blog: www.parablesblog.blogspot.com    

Mailing Address:
Joseph Herrin
P.O. Box 804
Montezuma, GA 31063