The Bible and Life

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

Pastoral Search Report

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Here is a fun article about a Pastoral Search by an unknown author. Enjoy.

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Pastoral Search Report

We do not have a happy report to give. We’ve not been able to find a suitable candidate for this church, though we have one promising prospect still. We do appreciate all the suggestions from the church members, and we’ve followed up each one with interviews or calling at least three references. The following is our confidential report on the present candidates.

Adam: Good man but problems with his wife. Also one reference told of how his wife and he enjoy walking nude in the woods.

Noah: Former pastorate of 120 years with no converts. Prone to unrealistic building projects.

Abraham: Though the references reported wife-swapping, the facts seem to show he never slept with another man’s wife, but did offer to share his own wife with another man.

Joseph: A big thinker, but a braggart, believes in dream-interpreting, and has a prison record.

Moses: A modest and meek man, but poor communicator, even stuttering at times. Sometimes blows his stack and acts rashly. Some say he left an earlier church over a murder charge.

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David: The most promising leader of all until we discovered the affair he had with his neighbor’s wife.

Solomon: Great preacher but our parsonage would never hold all those wives.

Elijah: Prone to depression-collapses under pressure.

Elisha: Reported to have lived with a single widow for a while.

Hosea: A tender and loving pastor but our people could never handle his wife’s occupation.

Deborah: Female.

Jeremiah: Emotionally unstable, alarmist, negative, always lamenting things, and reported to have taken a long trip to bury his underwear on the bank of foreign river.

Isaiah: On the fringe? Claims to have seen angels in church. Has trouble with his language.

Jonah: Refused God’s call into ministry until he was forced to obey by getting swallowed up by a great Whale. He told us the whale later spit him out on the shore near here. We hung up.

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Amos: Too backward and unpolished. With some seminary training he might have promise, but has a hang-up against wealthy people. Might fit in better in a poor congregation.

John: Says he is a Baptist, but definitely doesn’t dress like one. Has slept in the outdoors for months on end, has a weird diet, and provokes denominational leaders.

Peter: Too blue collar. Has a bad temper—even has been known to curse. Had a big run-in with Paul in Antioch. Aggressive, but a loose cannon.

Paul: Powerful CEO type leader and fascinating preacher. However, short on tact, unforgiving with younger ministers, harsh and has been known to preach all night.

Timothy: Too young.

Jesus: Has had popular times, but once when his church grew to 5000 he managed to offend them all and this church dwindled down to twelve people. Seldom stays in one place very long. And, of course, he’s single.

Judas: His references are solid. A steady plodder. Conservative. Good connections. Knows how to handle money. We’re inviting him to preach this Sunday.

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William James Roop

Apostolic Church History Podcast

Friday, March 13, 2026

Being A Christian

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

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JOB was not King.

JOB, was not a Pastor.

JOB was not a prophet.

JOB, was not Evangelist.

JOB was not an Apostle.

JOB, was not a Priest.

JOB, was not a Doctor.

JOB, he had no ministry.

Yet Job turned his back from evil.

Job was a man of integrity, upright and God fearing.

You don't need to hold office in church, to start living in holiness and have good character.

BEING A CHRISTIAN is not about having office or position in the Church.

BEING A CHRISTIAN IS SEEKING TO BE IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD BEING OBEDIENT AND FEARING HIM.

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Tuesday, March 10, 2026

Being Dominated By Evil Spirits

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

BEING DOMINATED BY EVIL SPIRITS.

Jesus said to me that anyone who is walking in darkness can be dominated by rulers of darkness. They rule over all unsaved people and anyone walking in darkness, including believers who are walking in darkness.

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That's why sometimes even saved people can yield to these spirits and let them dominate them if they are walking in darkness—if they're not in fellowship with God and walking in the Light of His Word. Evil spirits will dominate believers, if they allow them to—by consent, ignorance, or disobedience. That's the reason people, including believers, do certain things and don't know why they do them.

Jesus said, "That's why sometimes people who commit acts of darkness say, 'I don't know what made me do that.' Or that's why perfectly good people say about someone else, 'I would never do anything like that,' and before long, they've done something worse."

Jesus said that's why sometimes even in someone's own family, a family member does something strange or out of character, and other family members say, "What in the world made him do that? I've never seen anything like that!"

The reason they do it is that they are being dominated by rulers of darkness—demons and evil spirits. If they're walking in darkness, they are being ruled over and motivated by those rulers of darkness.

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Jesus gave me First John 5:19 to illustrate what He was talking about: "And we know that we are of God, and the whole WORLD lieth in WICKEDNESS [darkness]" (1 John 5:19). Jesus said to me, "Every unsaved man and woman, regardless of who they are—whether it's your kinfolks or someone else's kinfolks, your brother, sister, mother, or father—every unsaved person is in the kingdom of darkness. And they are ruled or motivated more or less by these demons or evil spirits who are the rulers of the darkness of this world."

Then Jesus said, "Whether they want to admit it or not, or whether you or anyone else wants to admit it, that is absolutely the truth." Those who have not been born again and who have not come into the Body of Christ are still in the kingdom of darkness. So every person who is not in the Kingdom of Light is still ruled or dominated to some extent by those demon spirits in the kingdom of darkness, although they may not know it (Eph. 2:1-3). That's the reason people do and say things they said they would never do."

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We see many examples of the unsaved being motivated by evil spirits. For example, I was preaching in California one time, and I read in the newspaper that a twenty-eight-year-old young man had deliberately drowned his own four-year-old son in the bathtub. When the authorities questioned this young man, they found he was all right mentally. He had no record of wrongdoing, had a good job, and lived in a fine home. He had no financial worries, came from a good family from whom he had inherited part of his wealth, and had worked in the family business. They couldn't find one thing wrong with him.

He told the authorities that there wasn't anything wrong with him mentally; he wasn't worried, had no problems, and the child was good. "But," he said, "while I was bathing him, I suddenly had an uncontrollable urge to harm him, and a voice told me to drown him. I yielded to it, and when I came to myself, I was holding my child under the water. I cried, 'Oh, God, why did I do that!'"

You see, he was dominated by evil spirits—rulers of the darkness of this world—because he was in darkness; he wasn't saved. But believers don't need to be dominated by evil spirits because we have been delivered out of the kingdom of darkness and translated into the Kingdom of light (Col. 1:13). We are in the light where Jesus is our Lord. He is the One who is to dominate us. He is the Ruler over us. He is our Head, not rulers of darkness.

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Satan is the head of those who are unsaved. If the unsaved people of this world really knew the truth, they would run to Christians to find out how to get saved so they could come out from under Satan's dominion.

There is a spirit world that is even more real than this physical world. People need to know that. When you talk about the spirit world, you have to realize that God is a Spirit (John 4:24), and that the devil, demons, and evil spirits also exist in the spirit world, as do angels—both good and evil. But believers have authority over evil spirits; the unsaved do not, for Satan is their god.

- Kenneth E Hagin ( The Triumphant Church )

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Apostolic Church History Podcast

Friday, March 6, 2026

Sinners Need The Gospel Now

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

SINNERS NEEDS THE GOSPEL NOW.

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Charlie Peace was a criminal. Laws of God or man curbed him not. Finally the law caught up with him, and he was condemned to death. On the fatal morning in Armley Jail, Leeds, England, he was taken on the death-walk. Before him went the prison chaplain, routinely and sleepily reading some Bible verses. The criminal touched the preacher and asked what he was reading.

‘‘The Consolations of Religion,’’ was the reply. Charlie Peace was shocked at the way he professionally read about hell. Could a man be so unmoved under the very shadow of the scaffold as to lead a fellow-human there and yet, dry-eyed, read of a pit that has no bottom into which this fellow must fall?

Could this preacher believe the words that there is an eternal fire that never consumes its victims, and yet slide over the phrase without a tremor? Is a man human at all who can say with no tears, ‘‘You will be eternally dying and yet never know the relief that death brings’’? All this was too much for Charlie Peace. So he preached. Listen to his on-the-eve-of-hell sermon.

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‘‘Sir,’’ addressing the preacher, ‘‘if I believed what you and the church of God say that you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worthwhile living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!’’

My reader, because the Church has lost Holy Ghost fire, men go to hell-fire! We need a vision of a holy God. God is essentially holy. The cherubim and seraphim were not crying, ‘‘Omnipotent! Omnipotent is the Lord!’’ nor ‘‘Omnipresent! and Omniscient! is the Lord,’’ but ‘‘Holy! Holy Holy!’’ This vast Hebrew concept needs to penetrate our souls again. If I make my bed in hell, if I take the wings of the morning—yet He is there. God compasses us in time; God, the inescapable God, awaits us in eternity. We had better be at peace with Him here, and be in the center of His will now!

- Leonard Ravehill ( Why Revival Tarries )

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Tuesday, March 3, 2026

Sister Etter Healing

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

By the time Sister Etter reached age forty she was a national phenomena. Various denominations recognized her ability to stir dead churches, bring in the unconverted, and cheer on a deeper spiritual walk with God. Doctors, lawyers, drunkards, and adulterers-people from all walks of life-were gloriously saved and filled with the Holy Spirit in her meetings. Because of one of her meetings in 1885, the police said they had never seen such a change in their city. The city had been so deaned up that they had nothing to do!

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One newspaper reporter wrote of Sister Etter: "She goes at it like a foot pad tackles his prey. By some supernatural power she just knocks em silly when they are not looking for it, and while they are down she applies the hydraulic pressure and pumps the grace of God into them by the bucketful."

Eventually the Lord led Maria to begin praying for the sick. At first, she was reluctant, feeling it would take away from her evangelistic call. But God continued to make His will clear, and she agreed. She studied the Word and began preaching His divine will in healing It didn't take long to see that evangelism and healing went hand in hand as thousands were won to Christ as a result of seeing others healed.

Maria preached that the strong manifestations of the Spirit were "nothing new; they were just something the Church had lost."And she refused to get caught up in the pet doctrines of the day, desiring only for the Holy Spirit to do His works.

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Once in a meeting, a crowd rushed to the platform and cried out, "What shall we do?"

Maria finishes the story: "They went down by the mighty wind power of the Holy Ghost. He sat upon the children of God till their faces shone like Stephen's when his enemies said he looked like an angel. Many received gifts; some for ministry, some as evangelists, some of healing, and hundreds of sinners received the gift of eternal life."

In another meeting, over twenty-five thousand people crowded in to hear Sister Etter. And remember, in those days, there were no public address systems! Maria wrote that before she even finished preaching, the power of God fell on the multitude and took control of about five hundred as they fell to the ground.

📕GOD'S GENERALS

Roberts Liardon

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Apostolic Church History Podcast

Friday, February 27, 2026

The Devils Territory

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

HOW MUCH AUTHORITY OVER THE DEVIL DO WE HAVE WHEN WE ARE IN HIS TERRITORY?

Answer: The devil has no right to trespass on God's property.

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But if you trespass on the devil's property, he's got a right to jump on you. God can't keep him from it, and you can't keep him from it, because you're on his property.

It's like this: I don't have authority in your house or apartment. I can't go there and say, "We're going to move everything out of this room and sell all of it." In the house of God, if the devil comes around, we've got authority. But if we go to the devil's house and try to exercise authority, he may throw us out.

In the summer of 1954 I was preaching in Oregon and had my family with me. We took a short vacation while traveling to meetings I was holding. On the way home, we stopped in Salt Lake City, Utah, to see the Mormon Temple. (I had studied the history of Mormonism and the Book of Mormon. I didn't agree with it because it's unscriptural. It doesn't agree with Paul's revelation.)

A guide was showing us around, explaining how the temple had been built. I was

listening intently when I heard somebody hit the ground. I didn't turn around because I was listening to the guide. But somebody said, "That man fell." About that time my wife looked around and said, "Daddy, our baby!" (It was Ken, and actually, he was 15 at the time.) He had hit the ground so hard that his shoes flew off.

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He was lying on his back with his knees drawn up to his stomach and his face working in some kind of seizure. If you had any spiritual sense at all, you could sense evil spirits when you stepped on the grounds. These were religious demons. They're the worst kind to get rid of.

They're the most difficult to cast out of a person. You can get rid of an adulterous or a lustful demon a hundred times faster than you can a religious demon.

So there Ken lay. Instantly the devil gave me all kinds of mental pictures of my preaching deliverance and Ken being in some kind of institution. The guide said, "That happens very often when I get to the part in my lecture about Moroni" (the angel who supposedly appeared to Joseph Smith). The guide thought it was a supernatural manifestation to corroborate what he had told about. He said, "Just pull that boy back under a tree. He'll soon come out of it."

I turned around, grabbed hold of Ken's arm and said, "Come out of him in the Name of Jesus Christ!" I literally lifted him by his arms, looked him right in the eye and said again, "Come out of him!" I shouted the third time, "Come out of him!" When I said it the third time, the demon came out. It hadn't been in his spirit, but had attacked his body. Ken straightened up, blinked his eyes and said, "Daddy, Daddy, where am I?"

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I said out loud, "Well, we got on the devil's territory and he jumped on you. But the Name of Jesus delivered you. Now let's get off the devil's territory before he jumps on some of the rest of us." We drove down the highway rejoicing over our victory.

Ken began telling his side of the story. He said the last thing he remembered was the guide talking about Moroni. He explained, "I felt something come out of the ground. It got into my feet and then into my knees. When it got up to about my stomach I don't remember anything else."The power of God does not come up out of the ground.That wasn't the Holy Spirit. And besides, we got rid of it in the Name of Jesus!

Ken said, "Daddy, what if that had happened at school?" I answered, "Don't ever be afraid it will happen again. If you are afraid, you'll open the door to the devil." You've got authority over Satan, but know this: Don't get on his territory.

Literally speaking, if you go to places controlled by Satan, you can get attacked.

Spiritually speaking, if you get into disobedience, you get spiritually over into the devil's territory.

You can claim protection, however, and go wherever you have to go.

- Kenneth E. Hagin

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