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About the Book
"The Power of Consecration" by Jeremiah Johnson explores the importance of consecrating ourselves to God and living a life fully dedicated to Him. Through personal anecdotes and biblical teachings, Johnson emphasizes the transformational power of true consecration and how it can lead to a deeper relationship with God and a life filled with purpose and fulfillment.
Maria Woodworth-Etter
Maria Woodworth-Etterâs Early life
Mariaâs early life was plagued with tragedies. Her father died of sunstroke when she was 11 years old leaving her mother with eight children to provide for. She married at 16 but fought a continual battle with ill-health, losing five of her six children. During her sickness she had visions of children in heaven and the lost suffering in hell.
She promised God, that if He would heal her, she would serve Him completely. She asked God for same apostolic power He gave the disciples and was gloriously baptized in the Holy Spirit. âIt felt like liquid fire, and there were angels all around.â
The call to preach
Despite her personal struggles with âwomen in ministryâ and the prevailent hostile attitudes to female preachers, she felt compelled by God to accept the invitation to preach in the United Brethren in Christ (Friends) in 1876 and later associated with the Methodist Holiness church.
Evangelism with signs and wonders
Though simply evangelistic in the early days she was unusually successful and in 1885 supernatural signs began to accompany her ministry. Her ministry resurrected dead churches, brought salvation to thousands of unconverted and encouraged believers to seek a deeper walk with God.
She descibes one of her meetings
She described an 1883 meeting in Fairview, Ohio: âI felt impressed God was going to restore love and harmony in the church..⌠All present came to the altar, made a full consecration, and prayed for a baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire. That night it came. Fifteen same to the altar screaming for mercy.
Men and women fell and lay like dead. I felt it was the work of God, but did not know how to explain it or what to say. I was a little frightened . . . after lying for two hours all, one after another, sprang to their feet as quick as a flash with shining faces and shouted all over the house. I had never seen such bright conversions or such shoutingâŚ.
The ministers and old saints wept and praised the Lord âŚ..they said it was the Pentecost power, that the Lord was visiting them in great mercy and power âŚ..(they) experienced visions of heaven and hell, collapsed on the floor as if theyâd been shot or had died.â Subsequently, thousands were healed of a wide variety of sicknesses and diseases and many believers, even ministers, received mighty baptisms of the Holy Spirit. She soon became a national phenomenon.
1,000 seater tent
In 1889, she purchased a tent that could seat eight thousand people and set it up in Oakland, California. âThe power of God was over all the congregation; and around in the city of Oakland. The Holy Ghost would fall on the people while we were preaching. The multitude would be held still, like as though death was in their midst.
Many of the most intelligent and best dressed men would fall back in their seats, with their hands held up to God. being held under the mighty power of God. Men and women fell, all over the tent, like trees in a storm; some would have visions of God. Most all of them came out shouting the praises of God.â
She declared that if 19th-century believers would meet Godâs conditions, as the 120 did on the Day of Pentecost, they would have the same results. âA mighty revival would break out that would shake the world, and thousands of souls would be saved. The displays of Godâs power on the Day of Pentecost were only a sample of what God designed should follow through the ages. Instead of looking back to Pentecost, let us always be expecting it to come, especially in these days.â
Her views of Pentecostalism
Initially she had grave concerns about the burgeoning Pentecostal movement, mainly because of some unbalanced teaching and reported extremism. Soon she came to believe it was an authentic move of the Holy Spirit and was enthusiastically welcomed within its ranks. She became both a model and a mentor for the fledgling movement. This association elicited another wave of revival between 1912 and her death in 1924 as she ministered throughout the country and her books were read across the world.
Etter Tabenacle
In 1918, she built Etter Tabernacle as her home church base and affiliated with the Assemblies of God. In her closing years she still ministered with a powerful anointing despite struggling with gastritis and dropsy. On occasion she would be carried to the podium, preach with extraordinary power, then be carried home again!
Her demise
Her health continued to decline and she died on September 16, 1924. She is buried in a grave in Indianapolis next to her daughter and son-in-law. Her inscription reads âThou showest unto thousands lovingkindness.â
In conclusion
Without doubt Maria Woodworth-Etter was an amazing woman blessed with an astonishing ministry. Rev. Stanley Smith â one of the famous âCambridge Sevenâ and for many years a worker with âThe China Inland Missionâ wrote this about her autobiography:
âI cannot let this opportunity go by without again bringing to the notice of my readers, âActs of the Holy Ghost,â or âLife and Experiences of Mrs. M. B. Woodworth-Etter.â It is a book I value next to the Bible. In special seasons of waiting on God I have found it helpful to have the New Testament on one side of me and Mrs. Etterâs book on the other; this latter is a present-day record of âthe Actsâ multiplied.
Mrs. Etter is a woman who has had a ministry of healing since 1885, her call as an evangelist being some years previous to this. I venture to think that this ministry is unparalleled in the history of the Church, for which I give all the glory to the Lord Jesus Christ, as Mrs. Etter would, I know, wish me to do. This ministry should be made known, for the glory of the Triune God and the good of believers.â
We agree and pray that such an anointing will rest upon Godâs end-time people so that âthis Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world before the end comes!â Matthew 24:14
Tony Cauchi
the majesty of god mastered him: john calvin
In 1538, the Italian Cardinal Sadolet wrote to the leaders of Geneva trying to win them back to the Roman Catholic Church after they had turned to the Reformed teachings. John Calvinâs response to Sadolet uncovers the root of Calvinâs quarrel with Rome that would determine his whole life. Hereâs what Calvin wrote to the cardinal: â[Your] zeal for heavenly life [is] a zeal which keeps a man entirely devoted to himself, and does not, even by one expression, arouse him to sanctify the name of God â ( John Calvin: Selections from His Writings , 89). The issue for Calvin was not, ďŹrst, the well-known sticking points of the Reformation: justiďŹcation, priestly abuses, transubstantiation, prayers to saints, and papal authority. All those would come in for discussion. But beneath all of them, the fundamental issue for Calvin, from the beginning to the end of his life, was the issue of the centrality and supremacy and majesty of the glory of God. Calvin goes on and says to Sadolet that what he should do â and what Calvin aims to do with all his life â is âset before [man], as the prime motive of his existence, zeal to illustrate the glory of God â ( Selections , 89). This would be a ďŹtting banner over all of John Calvinâs life and work â zeal to illustrate the glory of God . The essential meaning of Calvinâs life and preaching is that he recovered and embodied a passion for the absolute reality and majesty of God. Captive to Glory What happened to John Calvin to make him a man so mastered by the majesty of God? And what kind of ministry did this produce in his life? He was born July 10, 1509, in Noyon, France, when Martin Luther was 25 years old and had just begun to teach the Bible in Wittenberg. When he was 14, his father sent him to study theology at the University of Paris, which at that time was untouched by the Reformation and steeped in Medieval theology. But ďŹve years later (when Calvin was 19), his father ran afoul of the church and told his son to leave theology and study law, which he did for the next three years at Orleans and Bourges. His father died in May of 1531, when Calvin was 21. Calvin felt free then to turn from law to his ďŹrst love, which had become the classics. He published his first book, a commentary on Seneca, in 1532, at the age of 23. But sometime during these years he was coming into contact with the message and the spirit of the Reformation, and by 1533 something dramatic had happened in his life. Calvin recounts, seven years later, how his conversion came about. He describes how he had been struggling to live out the Catholic faith with zeal when I at length perceived, as if light had broken in upon me, in what a sty of error I had wallowed, and how much pollution and impurity I had thereby contracted. Being exceedingly alarmed at the misery into which I had fallen . . . as in duty bound, [I] made it my ďŹrst business to betake myself to thy way [O God], condemning my past life, not without groans and tears. God, by a sudden conversion, subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame. . . . Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness, I was immediately inďŹamed with [an] intense desire to make progress. ( Selections , 26) What was the foundation of Calvinâs faith that yielded a life devoted utterly to displaying the glory and majesty of God? The answer seems to be that Calvin suddenly, as he says, saw and tasted in Scripture the majesty of God. And in that moment, both God and the word of God were so powerfully and unquestionably authenticated to his soul that he became the loving servant of God and his word the rest of his life. Henceforth he would be a man utterly devoted to displaying the majesty of God by the exposition of the word of God. Compelled to Geneva What form would that ministry take? Calvin knew what he wanted. He wanted the enjoyment of literary ease so he could promote the Reformed faith as a literary scholar. That is what he thought he was cut out for by nature. But God had radically different plans. In 1536, Calvin left France, taking his brother Antoine and sister Marie with him. He intended to go to Strasbourg and devote himself to a life of peaceful literary production. But one night, as Calvin stayed in Geneva, William Farel, the ďŹery leader of the Reformation in that city, found out he was there and sought him out. It was a meeting that changed the course of history, not just for Geneva, but for the world. Calvin tells us what happened in his preface to his commentary on Psalms: Farel, who burned with an extraordinary zeal to advance the gospel, immediately learned that my heart was set upon devoting myself to private studies, for which I wished to keep myself free from other pursuits, and ďŹnding that he gained nothing by entreaties, he proceeded to utter an imprecation that God would curse my retirement, and the tranquillity of the studies which I sought, if I should withdraw and refuse to give assistance, when the necessity was so urgent. By this imprecation I was so stricken with terror, that I desisted from the journey which I had undertaken. ( Selections , 28) The course of his life was irrevocably changed. Not just geographically, but vocationally. Never again would Calvin work in what he called the âtranquillity of . . . studies.â From now on, every page of the 48 volumes of books and tracts and sermons and commentaries and letters that he wrote would be hammered out on the anvil of pastoral responsibility. Unrelenting Exposition Once in Geneva, what kind of ministry did his commitment to the majesty of God produce? Part of the answer is that it produced a ministry of incredible steadfastness â a ministry, to use Calvinâs own description of faithful ministers of the word, of âinvincible constancyâ ( Sermons from Job , 245). But that is only half the answer. The constancy had a focus: the unrelenting exposition of the word of God. Calvin had seen the majesty of God in the Scriptures. This persuaded him that the Scriptures were the very word of God. He said, âWe owe to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God, because it has proceeded from Him alone, and has nothing of man mixed with itâ ( John Calvin: A Collection of Distinguished Essays , 162). His own experience had taught him that âthe highest proof of Scripture derives in general from the fact that God in person speaks in itâ ( Institutes of the Christian Religion , 1.7.4). These truths led to an inevitable conclusion for Calvin. Since the Scriptures are the very voice of God, and since they are therefore self-authenticating in revealing the majesty of God, and since the majesty and glory of God are the reason for all existence, it follows that Calvinâs life would be marked by âinvincible constancyâ in the exposition of Scripture. He wrote tracts, he wrote the great Institutes , he wrote commentaries (on all the New Testament books except Revelation, plus the Pentateuch, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Joshua), he gave biblical lectures (many of which were published as virtual commentaries), and he preached ten sermons every two weeks. But all  of it was exposition of Scripture. In his last will and testament, he said, âI have endeavored, both in my sermons and also in my writings and commentaries, to preach the Word purely and chastely, and faithfully to interpret His sacred Scripturesâ ( Selections , 35). This was the ministry unleashed by seeing the majesty of God in Scripture. The Scriptures were absolutely central because they were absolutely the word of God and had as their self-authenticating theme the majesty and glory of God. But out of all these labors of exposition, preaching was supreme. Godâs Voice in Every Verse Calvinâs preaching was of one kind from beginning to end: he preached steadily through book after book of the Bible. He never wavered from this approach to preaching for almost 25 years of ministry in St. Peterâs church of Geneva â with the exception of a few high festivals and special occasions. âOn Sunday he took always the New Testament, except for a few Psalms on Sunday afternoons. During the week . . . it was always the Old Testament.â To give you some idea of the scope of Calvinâs pulpit, he began his series on the book of Acts on August 25, 1549, and ended it in March 1554. After Acts he went on to the Epistles to the Thessalonians (46 sermons), Corinthians (186 sermons), the Pastoral Epistles (86 sermons), Galatians (43 sermons), Ephesians (48 sermons) â until May 1558. Then there is a gap when he was ill. In the spring of 1559, he began the Harmony of the Gospels and was not ďŹnished when he died in May 1564. On the weekdays during that season he preached 159 sermons on Job, 200 on Deuteronomy, 353 on Isaiah, 123 on Genesis, and so on. One of the clearest illustrations that this was a self-conscious choice on Calvinâs part was the fact that on Easter Day, 1538, after preaching, he left the pulpit of St. Peterâs, banished by the City Council. He returned in September 1541, over three years later, and picked up the exposition in the next verse. Divine Majesty of the Word Why this remarkable commitment to the centrality of sequential expository preaching? Three reasons are just as valid today as they were in the sixteenth century. First, Calvin believed that the word of God was a lamp that had been taken away from the churches. He said in his own personal testimony, âThy word, which ought to have shone on all thy people like a lamp, was taken away, or at least suppressed as to us.â Calvin reckoned that the continuous exposition of books of the Bible was the best way to overcome the âfearful abandonment of [Godâs] Wordâ ( Selections , 115). Second, biographer T.H.L. Parker says that Calvin had a horror of those who preached their own ideas in the pulpit. He said, âWhen we enter the pulpit, it is not so that we may bring our own dreams and fancies with usâ ( Portrait of Calvin , 83). He believed that by expounding the Scriptures as a whole, he would be forced to deal with all that God wanted to say, not just what he  might want to say. Third, he believed with all his heart that the word of God was indeed the word of God , and that all of it was inspired and proďŹtable and radiant with the light of the glory of God. In Sermon number 61 on Deuteronomy, he challenged pastors of his day and ours: Let the pastors boldly dare all things by the word of God . . . . Let them constrain all the power, glory, and excellence of the world to give place to and to obey the divine majesty of this word . Let them enjoin everyone by it, from the highest to the lowest. Let them edify the body of Christ. Let them devastate Satanâs reign. Let them pasture the sheep, kill the wolves, instruct and exhort the rebellious. Let them bind and loose thunder and lightning, if necessary, but let them do all according to the word of God . ( Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians , xii) The key phrase here is âthe divine majesty of this word.â This was always the root issue for Calvin. How might he best show forth for all of Geneva and all of Europe and all of history the majesty of God? He answered with a life of continuous expository preaching. This is why preaching remains a central event in the life of the church five hundred years after Calvin. If God is the great, absolute, sovereign, mysterious, all-glorious God of majesty whom Calvin saw in Scripture, there will always be preaching, because the more this God is known and the more this God is central, the more we will feel that he must not just be analyzed and explained â he must be acclaimed and heralded and magniďŹed with expository exultation.