Bergsland Design shares the section of the site concerned with graphic design and book production. It’s not a legal DBA, rather a long-used pseudonym covering my graphic design work. If you’ve read my about me page, you can see it’s been a winding road to this place. This page attempts to help you sort out what I do in one part of the three basic areas: graphic design, font design, and teaching.
Bergsland Design the designer portion
Obviously I design much more than books. I’ve got designs on Zazzle—though that’s languishing for lack of attention. I design fonts, and much of my income comes from there. I design curricula and have three courses online in Udemy so far. When I’m bored I design landscapes, home interiors, and recipes.
Pages in this portion of my work
- Niche Publishing with InDesign
- Book production
- Book production charges
- Book publishing with InDesign CC
- Books on production & design
Here are some posts in this general category
Presenting my books as fine art
Presenting my books as fine art has become the delight of my life. But as usual, my way is unusual. Writing in InDesign makes fine art ePUBs possible and I love it. Of course the limitations of HTML are always going to be a problem. But InDesign can do a lot.
Another part of the problem is that you never really own your ePUBs. Kindle, Books, Nook, and Kobo plus all the rest of the distributing companies only give you a lease for your ePUB. They can cut you off at any time, your license reads that you only have the right to use their software under their lease restrictions.
My plan for presenting my books as fine art is to give them free to subscribers of the Biblical Reality Advice Substack site
This offer is for any of the subscribers to my substack including the free subscribers. My plan here is to enable you to avoid the need for dedicated readers like Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. I will ask you to message me with an email address that can handle larger attachments within problems. My ePUBs run from a few MB to dozens of MB. My Niche Publishing ePUB, for example, is over 40 MB. Even my new Biblical Reality book is over 8 MB.
You will need to use Books on Apple products: Macs, MacBooks, iPads, and iPhones. Or you can use Thorium, an excellent free ereader for MacOS, Windows, Linux, or the Readium Browser extension in Chrome. You can simply open the ePUB in either of them. I’ll have more complete instructions on the Substack posting.
What I want to do here is show you a little of why it matters to me
These captures butcher things pretty bad. Books is a good looking ereader. Thorium reads well, but the interface kinda looks like a Linux/DOS hybrid. First here are a normal page with Books on the left and Kindle on the right.
Type treatment of Section pages: Note the image quality. They both used the same JPEG.
Type treatment of chapter heads: Note headline itself. In Books on the left, I can use a numbered list to automatically add the chapter number. Then notice that the fonts were replaced by Kindle [not my choice], the character styles were radically changed, the background on the note style is dropped, the character style for The hidden truth is simply butchered. Believe it or not, the Kindle version on the right is a different file carefully reset to work as good as possible in Kindle.
Kobo and Nook have their own problems. Here’s the Kobo preview from their site. It’s using the same ePUB as Books uses.
This is a rough sample (not properly sized so the type shown is not the same) from Books
We must be who we are
We must be who we are in the midst of the assault. The barrage of lies tempts us, with its confusion, to give up and let someone else do the deed. Our focus must be on Truth.
Truth is a person, the one who we accept as the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. Yeshua Messiah is Truth. He defined it when He created everything in this 3D universe. Jesus defined truth, beauty, love, holiness, and reality when He created it.
I could give you dozens of scriptures, but you know them and you know Him. If you don’t, it’s time to wake up and realize that you are headed for Hell. Ask Jesus, out loud, to speak to you. He will.
We must be who we are in everyday living
In First Thessalonians, the clear message of the Lord coming to collect His Bride and take us home with Him forever, is bracketed by how we are to act in this delusional world. Just before Paul reminds them what is going to happen to the church, he finished with “to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we charged you.” 1 Thessalonians 4:11 Next, just after that explanation Paul tells us, “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, … Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” 1 Thessalonians 5: 9 & 11
Shortly after that He tells us how to do it. In verses 13b–22 we read:
Be at peace among yourselves. And we exhort you, brethren, admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil.
Simple straight instructions. This is how we are supposed to live in these last days before the end of the church age.
If the Lord wants you to do something else
He expects you to be listening for His personal guidance for you now. Ask Him to show you what you are to do: minute by minute, hour by more, day by day, month by month until you (with all the rest of us) hear that wonderful trumpet blast—and we’re gone.
I did and He told me to write this to you.
Reckon yourself dead
Reckon yourself dead was one of the first things I learned when I met Jesus in 1974. It was the core of my Dad’s teaching, at the time. He was my full-time mentor for the first year and a half as the Lord began my transformation from drug-crazed hippy.
It was a major part of my foundation: Jesus did it all, I was dead, the Lord had a plan, I could trust Him. The death was the core teaching of Romans 6. Reckon is just an accounting term—mark it down in the register. It happened.
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For he who has died is freed from sin. 8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. 9 For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. ROMANS 6: 3–11 RSV
Reckon yourself dead has many benefits
First, a dead person has no rights. That really helps us in modern day America where our so-called rights have really gotten us in spiritual trouble. The only right we have, that we have truly earned, is to die. As usual, Jesus took care of that. And with His normal grace, He handed us eternal life in response.
Second, it becomes hard to be offended when they start kicking our corpse around. I mean, who cares about a dead corpse?
Third, it doesn’t get in the way when we start putting on the new creation Paul talks about.
It really set you free. Reckoning my death was that point in time where my new creation came alive, I was truly reborn. Hallelujah!
Expanding the millennial vision
Expanding the millennial vision helps me to prepare for the coming changes. For the church, they won’t be painful yet still massive. Try to get your head around the idea that within a decade or so we will be living in complete spiritual union with our fiancée, Yeshua Messiah.
Judging by Jesus’s priestly prayer before He and His disciples headed down to Gethsemane, it is clear that when the marriage is consummated at the marriage supper of the Lamb we will be one with Him in the same way as He, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are one. John 17 Due to the fact that He was sin free and completely obedient to the Father there is no doubt about that prayer being answered.
As the planet is cleansed and remodeled back toward Eden it’s quite possible that the tilt of the Earth will be changed. There are a couple verses in Isaiah talking about the Earth moving in space—though as usual the Lord is careful to keep those things in faith.
I had just finished a new Autumn graphic. So, as I was contemplating all of this, I asked the Lord the Lord if there would still be seasons in the millennium. To my surprise, He answered with “Yes, David.” I thought a minute and realized that (as often happens) my query was too open-ended. So, I asked, “Four seasons?” I sensed His chuckle.
Expanding the millennial vision helps us know Him better
I got into all of this because I am concerned about the fact that all mountains will be laid low during the final week of years. I’m having a bit of trouble with that because I miss New Mexico. We lived there 25 years and my wife and I both loved the vistas of the mountains as seen from above half the atmosphere with single-digit humidity. But then I realized that it would be good, He’s incredibly creative.
At least the millennium will still be the ecology we know. You know like water-based flesh, blood, and all that lives. In the new creation, I expect radical changes to the physics of existence. I’m convinced that the lack of seas is due to the fact that we’ll be living in a new existence with radical changes to physics, chemistry, biology, and so on. I remember hearing a man I respect in the Lord who had an extensive experience in heaven. He was walking through a glorious field of spectacular flowers.
Then he realized that the flowers were passing through his legs. Turning around he saw that there was no track of damaged plants where he had walked through. If you take that added to the fact that Jesus’ resurrected body seemingly could simply walk through walls, it’s obvious that changes have occurred. I had a tiny revelation a while back. The streets of gold are transparent because our new bodies can see all matter as transparent. But that’s just the speculations of a longtime believer who has seen the Lord do amazing things.
What will we be doing during the millennium and then the new creation?
The Lord knows that we are designed to get deep satisfaction out of doing the work each of us has been designed to do. As a creative, my satisfaction comes by creating things which cause people to reexamine themselves and their relationship with our fiancée.
I put the ball of packed leaves together because at this latitude [44°] the first day of Fall is Labor Day. So, “Happy Autumn!”
The ball of packed leaves in Fall colors was done in Adobe FireFly.
Procedure or satisfaction — Bible or Word
Procedure or satisfaction seems to be the crux of this problem I’m seeing. It’s not recognizing where the life is coming from. A large problem is my tendency to see importance without thinking things through. But this has been going on for a long time. I finally learned what the core problem is.
Part of it has surfaced again recently as I have turned to evangelical pastors on YouTube for teaching scripture. At least they are covering scripture and running their lives by what they learn in that study. It’s a real joy going through scripture verse by verse. That’s the way I always taught. Nothing else really works.
But I’m increasingly dissatisfied by the lack of functional content. Worse, I’ve come to see that (even in this procedure) large parts of the content delivered is mere human opinion. I know what the problem is, but I’m having trouble explaining it without triggering bad reactions in you.
Feeding on scripture effectively
This has been my focus far almost the entire fifty years in which I’ve been walking with the Lord. There is a real problem seldom recognized in looking at the Bible. It is seen subconsciously as an occult book with magical powers. I find it best expressed in John.
You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; John 5:39 RSV
There’s the fatal flaw right here. What Jesus is saying is that there is no eternal life in the scriptures. Hang on! The life is not in the book. The life is in the Author of the book. This is made clear in the next verse..
and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. John 5:40 RSV
The Bible bears witness, but the life is in the Lord. In fact, I continually make the point that you are wasting your time if you do not ask the Holy Spirit to show you what He wants you to learn today. Scripture bears witness, but we need life. That life comes through the anointing of the Holy Spirit as He converts the logos to rhema. And YES, you need to ask.
Procedure or satisfaction — Bible or Word?
It happened again this morning. I want to keep away from naming people. But this morning I was reading a post from a Substack site that is good enough so that I bought a subscription. After some well said advice about what is coming upon us, the closing line was “We’ve got to stay in the Word to survive.”
We’ve got to stay in the Word to survive
Yes, and Amen! However, the Word is a person not a book. We need to abide in the Word (Yeshua Messiah) by the power of the Holy Spirit to get through this mess which is rapidly becoming overwhelming. We need the Spirit to guide us to what He is saying to us today.
That does not happen consistently unless we ask Him to do that—every time we open the book. A major aspect of the walk of faith is this need to constantly ask the Lord for help. This is where our faith is “new every morning”. We do not get to rest on what we gathered yesterday. Yesterday’s stuff has already rotted into a memory which is no longer alive.
Our life is spent on gathering fresh food daily—or it should be. We can’t simply collect a few verses to get us going. We need to ask the Lord for food that will satisfy our needs for the day. He will be pleased that you asked.
The prime skill needed is hearing from the Lord
That happens with practice and a recognition of reality. The goal of our existence is an intimate relationship with our spouse, the Lord Jesus.
This relationship is the reason behind the need to always ask first. To proceed in faith starts with a fresh rhema from the Lord. If we don’t have that, we’re wandering around on our own recognizance. The only thing we can do on our own is get in trouble—sooner or later.
The end of doctrine draws near
The end of doctrine draws near and I (for one) am very pleased. Doctrine is used to build a denomination. The age of doctrine is nearly completed. It was necessary for a group which is breaking off from the overall church as a result of the effort to reform it. In a real way, Luther was the impetus for the beginning of the denominational wars. Don’t tell him, though. He’d be upset.
It was necessary because Luther was talking about a radical change in focus—something which had been lost by the church. It was basically a simple scriptural teaching. The problem was that no one had the scripture at their disposal. It was not available except to church-trained clergy.
The doctrinal wars are still mostly on that level. It’s a battle between seminarians. But now they are denominational seminaries. Because of that, most of the Truth the Holy Spirit shows us has been reduced to a denominational stance.
The problem is that doing this to something important, like the necessity of being born again, renders it lifeless. Rebirth is not a doctrinal stance. It is an essential requirement to enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus told us that.
But, it happens differently with every believer. The process of being reborn gives us the Holy Spirit as the Lord moves inside us. The Holy Spirit teaches us all things, so doctrine is no longer necessary—at all. It is replaced by Truth. But that only happens fully after the Rapture.
The age of doctrine is nearly completed, its end draws near
Of course, the Lord is not restricted. In the midst of all this He stepped outside the denominations and started something new to bring the Holy Spirit back into the church.
In places like among the Cherokee in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and then on Azusa Street in Los Angeles, the Lord brought the Holy Spirit back into the life of the church.
The Holy Spirit had been driven out of the church near the time of Constantine. He just made the church leadership too uncomfortable. The Holy Spirit was a level of power that an institutional church could not allow, because they couldn’t control it [probably because it was a Him, not an it.] Of course, the loving Lord we serve just went along and stepped outside the walls of the churches. He doesn’t need the Church. The Church needs Him.
Doctrines are the codification of rhemas received from the Holy Spirit
Without the Holy Spirit the problems like those Luther dealt with were inevitable. But the church had learned. You can control the church with man-made doctrines. They were like defensive walls of rigid containment. They hadn’t realized that intellectual doctrine is anathema.
The doctrinal stances of various denominations made it very difficult for believers to receive the teaching of the Holy Spirit within the church. Most of us have experienced the pain of rejection which results from listening to the Holy Spirit. But thankfully, that is almost over forever.
Once we are pulled out, we’ll just be the Bride of the Messiah—no denominations any more. The time of denominations is almost over! Praise the Lord! They were necessary—but will no longer be needed… The freedom of the Kingdom of God is such a joy.
Screw around with no consequences
Screw around with no consequences is the core message of the pro-choice crowd. It’s at the side of the wide and easy road. It always has been.
No one wants to deal with the fact that the designer of us all designed us so that this caused a lot of problems—which we are now living through. Avoiding those problems is the reward for following the original plan. You know where the man cleaves to his wife, and gives up his life to enable his wife to be what the Lord designed her to be—whatever that is.
But humans being what we are, a slice of pizza and an ice cream cone are an appropriate breakfast. With a mug of beer to wash down the Tums.
If the pain of the rebellion of others wasn’t so severe, it would be hilarious.
Screw around with no consequences or benefits. Right!!!
We’ve been given the manufacturer’s handbook to help us live in joy (by the power of the Holy Spirit). But you know Americans, it’s all about instant gratification of the flesh.
That’s why hypercars, exist. It’s only five million dollars. Party hearty ’til you die. There’s got to be more than that. Everyone knows that. But most refuse to consider that part of the puzzle. It was a 2023 Bugatti W16 Mistral—but I believe they sold out fast. Or maybe this one was vaporware?
This is one of the more exotic outbursts of the screw around with no consequences world view. But sin is sin.
I know that the baby is with Jesus, wondering why his or her tour of duty was short and so abruptly ended.
Evangelism or discipleship we need both
Evangelism or discipleship we need both and it’s a real problem. The Lord has been working on me for the past five years. He has me attached to an aggressive special forces evangelistic church. I’ve had a hard time with it. Because they have a clear call and they are anointed in that direction.
But I come from the discipleship camp. My current church does not do any discipleship, as I understand it. It’s been interesting to see that my skills which are focused on walking in the Spirit, understanding scripture, and working under the anointing in your daily life are seen of no value to them.
My goal is to teach people how to develop a personal relationship with Jesus, how to live in a constant state of holiness, how to allow the Holy Spirit work in and through us in everyday living. I focus a lot on things like praying without ceasing as an ongoing lifestyle. How do you make that work better in your life, and how to use that to minister to those you live with, work with, and fellowship with. These things have no place in this church.
As I was pondering this stuff this morning at church [an evangelical church online] the Lord showed me some stuff. Pastor Gary was teaching on Romans 14 about the church dealing with the differences within the churches. I flashed on how I constantly feel under condemnation in Evangelical churches. It’s such a basic difference that I rarely find anyone who can even discuss it.
How about this? In the lists of of the Lord’s gifts in Ephesian four, only one of them is focused on evangelism. “And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,” EPHESIANS 4: 1-2 RSV
Here’s the way I teach it: God has it set up so that He calls a person and sends them out to start a church (or whatever). That’s an apostle. The apostle has the vision and calling. But an apostle needs a person who hears clearly from the Lord to give him or her direct input from God about how to implement the call. That’s the ministry of a prophet.
Once the apostle and prophet have the ministry up and running they need people to join them in the work. To get fresh bodies you need an evangelist who preaches the Gospel and introduces people to Jesus. This describes many evangelical churches.
What they end up with is a bunch of converts who have no idea how to fit themselves into their place in the Kingdom of God. For that they need pastors and teachers. A pastor is a shepherd who cares for the sheep. In our culture, we call these people counselors and healers. But I’m at the tail end of all this as one who is called to be a teacher. What’s the teacher’s job? To explain to the rest of the bozos how this all works.
Evangelism or discipleship, we need both and it’s a real problem.
This difference is so strong, that there is no place for me to work in the evangelistic church I attend. That’s very sad. The sheep have almost no help in everyday living. The impetus for this post showed up when the Lord led me to check out the great commission and Mark’s final instructions. I found what I was looking for and I was surprised at how strong the differences are.
Mark’s vision is strongly evangelistic: 15 He said to them, “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.16 He who believes and is baptized will be saved. But he who does not believe will be condemned. There is not even a hint of discipleship. There’s no place for people like me there.
The Great Commission is all about discipleship: 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” Preaching is not mentioned. Making disciples and teaching them is the vision here.
We need all five of the leadership gifts
Evangelism or discipleship? We need both and all five of the gifts which Jesus gives to the church leadership are required. If your group is missing any of them, you need to begin praying for the rest of them—people who can fill things out so the body can be edified.
Laying the foundation for a new life
Laying the foundation for helping the religious into Life is necessary. At this point in the Church Age we’ve come to the place where the normal believer’s life has nearly disappeared.
It’s hard to ignore the huge numbers of religious people who have not fulfilled the basic necessities of salvation. I call them churchians, as opposed to Christians, let alone believers.
Before we can talk about what a normal believer is, we must lay a solid and true foundation for living in the Kingdom of God. We start with a true and trustworthy beginning place.
Placing the cornerstone: we can not assume that people know what that means. A cornerstone is where the building begins. It sets the starting point and baseline from which everything is measured. It must be strong and solid, placed perfectly to enable the structure to be based on Truth. Our cornerstone is clear. It’s a person—the One who is Truth, our Messiah, Jesus or Yeshua in Hebrew.
That’s not common knowledge in the church. For example, Jesus does not lead us to the Truth: Jesus is The Truth. Truth was defined by the Lord as He created the universe. He told us that clearly, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He’s the perfect cornerstone. Hallelujah!
Laying the rest of the foundation requires faith. Hebrews eleven tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God. And we have been given excellent foundation materials—scripture. The Bible is God Almighty’s gift to His people. The Bible is what it is because the author is the Holy Spirit. He anointed the humans who wrote it.
Many people are confused by this fact. This is where people get into trouble. The Bible cannot save you. You cannot even understand scripture accurately without asking the Holy Spirit to anoint the words of the book—every time you are reading and studying in that book. This is a place where mankind’s intellect gets us into deep trouble very quickly.
Our foundation is scripture brought alive by the power of the Holy Spirit, directly or through an anointed teacher. I do not care what modern theologians say and commentaries are a minefield of human thought unless they are inspired.
I specifically use the term scripture instead of the commonly used term Word for an important reason. A man teaching out of the Bible by his intellect is worthless, at best.
Our foundation for a new life — Jesus and the Sword of the Spirit
Jesus is the Word. In Revelation 19, as Jesus gets ready to ride leading us to bring peace to Jerusalem, scripture says the name by which He is called is The Word of God. The apostle John understood this when He wrote the beginning of His Gospel:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life JOHN 1: 1–4A
Let me show you something, please. Many places in the Bible use the Word (capitalized) and it is taught that the Word is the Bible. That is not true. The Word is the author of the Bible, but the Bible is not the source of power. Rather the Spirit of the Author is that source.
Let’s take three examples to explain what I mean.
The first one is short. How it is taught makes me sad.
You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life JOHN 5:39
This is taught or preached telling us that we find truth and life in the scriptures. But that is only part of a sentence. The rest of it tells us the truth.
And it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. John 5:39b–40
The scriptures bear witness to our Messiah, yet people refuse to turn to Jesus to receive that life. I am the Life. Jesus made that really clear. Nowhere does it say Scripture is the life. The foundation for a new life is Jesus and the scriptures.
The second example is more commonly mistaught. It is actually used as a proof text for the importance of the Bible. Again it is not read carefully.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 4: 12 & 13
It becomes clear when we put the beginning of verse 12 and verse 13 together. The word of God is living and active… And before Him…
The word of God is Him, not a book.
The Bible can transform a person only by the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It is God Almighty (as the Word of God) who has the power and the wisdom to make scripture work in this manner. Jesus is the Word. The Holy Spirit was sent to explain these things to us. John 14: 26
Finally, we have a troublesome teaching. In Ephesians 6, Paul’s explanation of the armor of God says, and the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. We are told it is obvious that the sword is the Bible. That is not what it says. The Bible is not an occult book where quoting the words carefully provides spiritual power.
The Word (in this verse) is not logos as John shared in the first verses of his Gospel about Jesus. The Greek word used is rhema. Rhema means a spoken statement for a specific purpose. The Greek lexicon says: the word by which something is commanded, directed, enjoined. That is why it is the Sword of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who gives us a word of power to speak which transforms a situation in which we are involved. Or, the Holy Spirit converts the words of Scripture to touch us or others with power.
Functional cessationism is a major problem
Functional cessationism is a major problem as the world falls apart. As the endtimes intensify, His power will become more and more important in our lives. These are truly the perilous times Paul taught about in II Timothy 3: 1–3. We need the Holy Spirit to thread our way through the increasing chaos.
As I’ve shared many times, The Lord has been radically disciplining me over the past five years since my wife went home. Part of that has been a renewing of my first love. I had allowed the enemy to beat me down.
My life has always been about giving the Holy Spirit free rein in my life. In 2020, as I dealt with my grief, I discovered that in many ways I had been stifling the Holy Spirit’s activity in my life. That was an appalling shock to me. I had ended up living as a functional cessationist. Part of that was a good thing—as I have become a bit more mature. But the Power of the Holy Spirit was no longer seen very often in my life.
I probably need to define cessationism. It’s the view that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, such as healing, tongues, and prophetic revelation, pertained to the apostolic era only, served a purpose that was unique to establishing the early church, and passed away once the New Testament was canonized. That is at least foolishness, and very close to blatant heresy. Most of the church is afflicted with Functional Cessationism—and it’s a major problem today. Many non-denominational churches claim to be spirit-filled but there is no evidence of the Holy Spirit in the church.
As I have mentioned many times, one of our foundational scripture verses is Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Hebrews 13:8 Jesus has not changed. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are simply part of what He offers us through the Holy Spirit. He does not change, so there is no reason for us to say that He started the church with power, but He is no longer doing that. The gifts listed in I Corinthians 12 are constantly available whenever the Holy Spirit determines they will help. The Holy Spirit distributes these gifts, as He wills: knowledge, wisdom, faith, healings, miracles, prophecy, discerning spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues.
Functional cessationism greatly hampers spiritual growth
I need to remind you that Pat and I were mainline believers—coming out of the Episcopal Church. So, we’ve never been flagrant holy rollers. As such, we didn’t seek the gifts—we sought the Lord. The gifts are under His control. The arrogance of saying that the Lord has changed on these gifts is appalling. They are simply part of the resources the Lord offers as we minister to others. Scripture is clear. We minister and the gifts follow us confirming the truth of what we are teaching and preaching.
During my current period of discipleship, the Lord has re-awakened the gifts in my life. When my wife and I were leading the mission church in Albuquerque, the Lord commonly used the gifts to help us. We were basically a spiritual hospital for the very damaged people the Lord sent us as our sheep. Over the twelve years, the Lord empowered us to help people.
We never made a big deal about it, but Pat’s work as a Biblical Counselor was often enabled by a word of knowledge or wisdom from the Spirit. The Lord would tell her what her sheep were really doing, what sins they were committing, people they hadn’t forgiven, and a lot of things like that. Those revelations often triggered major growth and healing in her sheep.
She found that she really couldn’t mention what had happened because the counselee would freak out because the Lord had ratted on her. We learned not to push the gifts, but the power of the Holy Spirit to help. In the same way, while leading a Bible study the Lord would give me the scripture verses to use to answer questions raised. They were just a normal part of our life.
The problem was that the gifts were all tied to life at the church
For us, all that ceased when Pat went through several physical attacks. Her flesh began failing her. The crush of dealing with her 2nd and 3rd spine fusion, followed by all the rest of her physical ailments, forced us to shut the church down. With our public ministry cut off, we were dealing with life on a survival level. Functional Cessationism makes it very difficult.
We found ourselves in the position many of you are in now that the end is approaching fast. We could see that we were in the beginnings of the Great Falling Away. It became more and more difficult to find a church where the gospel was preached and Holy Spirit was active. We found ourselves living a life where there were no people in our life who understood the realities of the daily walk in the Spirit.
What the Lord did was show me how the Holy Spirit would help my fictional characters in their lives. More and more I began writing into my characters what I was experiencing with the Lord in my daily life. It’s been very intense. Since 2020, I have been writing and publishing twelve hours or more every day, six days a week. Now that my vehicle died, it’s gotten even more intense. As the church I was attending simply dropped me out of their lives, I have been forced to become ever more dependent upon Jesus. The reality of the power of the Holy Spirit in my life has not only sustained me but increased my spiritual growth. What incredible joy it has been.
As I began searching the online world for community, I discovered it is not available
I’ve found some good preaching and worship. Several times I responded to the online church’s offer to help those of us who have been forced online to find help. If I were a new believer, maybe, but even there it would be an effort to get me to come to church and get involved. But for many of us, that is not possible. For someone like me, a mature believer now over fifties years old in the Lord, there is nothing—no way to get involved.
I want to say (or shout) that the Lord will meet your need! It may be nothing like you’ve experienced before. But the Lord has the power to help us—as all believers and the churches are assaulted by the world. This is a rapidly growing problem. All the prophecy teachers are saying that the number one request they receive is, “Where can I find a church that teaches the truth any more?” The most recent stats I’ve seen are that less than 2% of churches even teach on prophecy. But it’s worse than that, the vast majority of pastors and priests do not teach scripture or how we are supposed to survive as the spirit of lawlessness takes over our society.
The Holy Spirit is more important now than ever because of the deception
If you are confused or unsure, ask the Holy Spirit to show you the Truth about these things. He’d love to talk with you—if you will let Him.