The Savior speaks of one redemption
in John 3:16:
“God so loved the world, that He gave
His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish, but have
everlasting life.”
But in
Ephesians 5:25-27 Paul goes on to speak of
another redemption that is deeper and more
profound:
“Christ
also loved the Church, and gave Himself for
it; that He might **sanctify
and cleanse it with the washing of water by
the word, that He might present it to
Himself a glorious Church, not having spot,
or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it
should be holy and without blemish.”
This is
evidently something distinct from the first
redemption, and unquestionably more profound
and more radical in its nature. In the one,
sinners are saved from perishing; in the
other, the already saved Church is now
sanctified and made to be without blemish!!!
What is this mysterious greater redemption?
How do you get it yourself? The purpose of
this website is to answer both of these
questions for you using heritage experts.
Direct
references to this much-fabled better way are
right there in black and white in your Bible:
Heb.
3:17 "Now with whom was He angry forty
years? Was it not with those who sinned,
whose corpses fell in the
wilderness? 18 And to whom did
He swear that they would not enter His rest,
but to those who did not obey?
19 So we see that they could not enter in
because of unbelief."
Heb
4:1 "Therefore, since a promise remains of
entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you
seem to have come short of it."
Heb.
4 "For He has spoken in a certain place of the
seventh day in this way: "And God rested on the
seventh day from all His works"; 5 and
again in this place: "They shall not enter My
rest." 6 Since therefore it remains that
some must enter it, and those to whom it was
first preached did not enter because of
disobedience, 7 again He designates a
certain day, saying in David, "Today," after
such a long time, as it has been said: "Today,
if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your
hearts." 8 For if Joshua had given them
rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of
another day. 9 There remains
therefore a rest for the people of
God. 10 For he who has entered His
rest has himself also ceased from his works as
God did from His."
There
are also a great number of veiled references
to it scattered throughout the Bible as
explained by this heritage author:
The Better
Way (a 53 page PDF loaded
with Scripture by Dr. Rev. Carradine)
So, in
short, this mysterious greater redemption was
not claimed by the Israelites in the Old
Testament, and was left for us to claim.
The astonishingly powerful early church walked
in it, but succeeding generations gradually
lost it.
So
what is His Rest? I have seen
definitions from very good sources that go
something like this: "It means that you
walk in unbroken spiritual victory with a
mellow trusting attitude." I am sorry to
say that this common understanding, while
superficially true, misses the whole point.
It is something much
more wonderful than this. His
Rest is a mystery.
A Scriptural "mystery" is a truth
that cannot truly be grasped by the mind
before it is experienced directly. For
example, Salvation is a mystery to those who
are yet lost. It is just too wonderful
and unearthly for the lost to quite grasp!
Similarly, His Rest is a mystery to
those believers who have not yet obtained
it. Again, it is just too wonderful and
unearthly to quite grasp! So faithful
believers have no choice but to fumble around after it
for year after frustrating year...
But in
most cases before a lost soul is saved,
someone will explain how they can find
salvation. And so it is here also...
The Saint
and the Truly Saintly
a 5
page PDF
The Cannon
a 2 page parable.
The
Life of Flowers
A gorgeous time-lapse photo display set to
music that shows how God created the natural
world to be always evermore filled and
re-filled with more of His boundless and
spotless Life.
This website is an independent online library of the best works
of tested, proven and practical
results-oriented authors of the genre.
Their works are provided to you free and
uncopyrighted as an online school for those
exceptional souls who are willing to pay the
considerable heart-investment required to
translate an earnest hope to walk in His best
favour -into the supernaturally stable radiance
of the actual reality.
Who am I? My story is
on the "Testimonies" page. I have spent much of
my time since I became disabled with Mercury
poisoning in 1996 working on this project. I
adhere to proven and widely known heritage
authours of the Wesleyan school to open up
old-fashioned Scriptural Holiness, so that you
can obtain this little-known peerless grace as
they did.
Tom Plumb (aka Earnest Seeker)
This
website is designed to be an
intensely serious endeavour to serve
those hungry souls who ache for more
of Him and are willing to take
up the challenge posed by the
timeless words of outstanding
heritage authours -so that (at last)
you may sink to your knees and cast
your ALL unto Him in full trust that
He will respond to your desperate
faith and make Himself LORD of your
ALL........... Only then
does true Christianity begin. Then,
His Rest will come to be understood
as both the fulfillment of the
gospel's promise -and the
experiential foundation for the
Kingdom. You graduate
from being a Saint in training to
being a Saint in truth.
My
Approach
Earnest Seeker
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There are two main tracks you may take
to the same goal: Preachers or People. On the
"Entry" page the principles and Scriptures are
exhaustively expounded by numerous acclaimed
Holiness preachers. On the "Testimonies"
page you will find a great number of stories
about how various people made it through into
this ultimate victory over inborn (innate but
and covert) sinfulness of heart and entered
His Rest.
In every category, I have tried to
provide a wide enough variety of resources to
appeal to souls of every background and level of
achievement, so if you find a resource that is
too theological for your taste -please, please
move on -because there are others that are rich
in homely examples and yet do the same job. Some
of the testimonials will make you laugh. Others
will make you cry...
Preachers write most of them because they were
highly literate while in the past, most
were not. But look, and you will find plenty
written by or about ordinary folks.
Note: You will
find that I seldom use your favorite
authors. There is a good reason
for that. If you want go somewhere
special, like a mountain top you have to use
special means of getting there. Sorry,
but your tried and true Chevvie just will not
get you there.
I know you just
like to sample everything at random. You
can do that, but you would do better to to
follow the menu below. Start with
the Introduction page. That is what it
is there for. If you omit this you will
be chasing your tail and wondering why.
The left hand menu
options are there to guide your research:
1.
Introduction This page
contains a number of important topical
introductory articles that you will need to start
initially and at various times thereafter as you
become more familiar with the challenging task
before you.
2. Central Idea
This is a short and very punchy resource for those
who want to quickly get to the core of our theme.
3.
Testimonies This page offers a
number of testimonies of those precious souls
both heritage and contemporary, who have entered
His Rest. Most are excerpts that describe
how they came to abide in this spiritual
dimension, and are often taken from very lengthy
heritage works that describe the whole life.
Most are quite instructive to those who
wish to follow on to enter His Rest, but I have
also included some testimonies from famous
souls within His Rest that did not provide us
with as much helpful information, even though
their stories are stunning. (e.g. Mme.
Guyon, Brother Lawrence & Saint Francis of
Assisi)
Early historical figures are often that way,
because they were so very poorly informed
themselves. In fact, they would have
literally given their right arm to have the
wealth of resources found on this website at
hand. But they did not. You do!!!!
So you can be far more informed on how to
both enter and retain His Rest than they ever
were because generations since have read their
worthy works - and then went on to build upon
their shoulders.
4.
Enter This page
is the beef of the website. Most of
these exceptional resources were carefully
sifted from the Wesleyan Heritage Library CD to
provide excerpts and brief resources that speak
directly to those who earnestly seek to know how
they too may make their hearts pure and white as
did many in the past. Diligent reading
of several selections are necessary in order to
get a proper overview of what is required to
enter His Rest. Let the attitude of the Bereans
be your guide.
Careful
minor editing and notes make occasionally
obscure heritage language clear. Obsolete
old english words are translated.
The
pages below are optional. The
essential purpose of the website is
accomplished in the above pages, but there is
still real value on these pages.
Wisdom
On this page seasoned sanctified figures of the
past give guidance to those who have more
recently come to enter His Rest. These
articles provide good insight into the inward
workings of this state of grace for anybody,
although it was specifically written for
those who have just freshly entered His Rest.
Historical
Assorted articles to provide valuable
historical context.
Ichabod
Assorted articles to help us all answer
the question, "So, if the Great Awakening was so
great, just where did it go?" There
are a great variety of routes to the same
unhappy and perilous outcome of walking the wide
way outside of His Rest; saved but not
completely saved, slowly being strangled by the
dead hands of carnality and denominationalism.
Charismata
Articles and resources of special
impact for charismatic/pentecostals that are
digging into the relationship between "His
Spirit" and "His Rest". Also included is a
section of heavy-duty prophecies on the topic
and another on the cast-iron Gnostic deceptions
that seek to keep us all in "orthodox" bondage.
Articles
Assorted good bric-a-brac I have found that are of
interest but off topic.
FAQs
Seekers of His Rest in every century have
been full of urgent questions about this topic.
Here you have access to both those
heritage questions, and their fascinating
authoritative answers that have been tested by
both time and tempest.
Links
Other Holiness websites.
Books
Links to places you may purchase
books on Holiness.
Defining His
Rest and Sanctification
His
Rest, of course refers to the Old Testament
promise that remained unfulfilled because of
the truculence of His "stiff-necked people".
Entire (completed, whole, finished)
sanctification is the long hoped for New
Testament fulfillment. Sanctification
and Entire Sanctification are not at all the
same things. Clear definitions with a
comparison chart. 3 page PDF
True and
Counterfeit Rest
There has been a perennial
problem ever since the days of Wesley.
Wesley saw that those who claimed to be
sanctified often did not live lives that would
confirm their claim....
a 2 page excerpt
from John Wesley's "Plain Account of Christian
Perfection"
Note:
In many
Christian circles these days tongues,
prophecies, dreams, visions, gifts,
healings, miracles and ministries etc. are
pushed almost to the exclusion of everything
else. All these spectacular acts of power do
good if used in the fear of God, but have little
direct bearing upon the topic of this website.
This is so because this culminating holiness is
just as foundational as salvation itself and is
worked by the same blood-bought "saving grace".
The settling
of this matter of heart-holiness is of more
importance to the soul than these various
miraculous helps that He may graciously provide
along the way. The gifts put their weight upon
the foundation which is Christ, and not the
other way around. Gifts are necessary
equipment for service. A completed
sanctification makes you a reliable and
trustworthy steward of His treasure to
reliably serve Him in the first place.
Build wholly upon the Rock, and your house will
not fall in the storm. Earnest Seeker
This
will all take considerable digging. There is
lot here, and you cannot expect it to be easy
since Churches these days have not been very
thorough in teaching the fundamentals on this
topic. You might have to dig right down
to the bedrock basics of the gospel and
holiness for yourself. See: The
Robust Gospel
This
library website seems to
be unique on the web in
systematically bringing together
both living and heritage saintly
souls who walk in His Rest in the
common cause to restore this rare
state of supreme and unshakable
constant harmony with God
back to knowledge and practice in
our day. This state of
spotless grace is what all those
who hunger and thirst for God's
best are looking for: a better and
higher state of grace to dwell in
-which is truly worthy of His Name
in every way. No more inner
battles will ever be needed again
because the inward carnal man
together with his perennial lusts
has become fully vanquished, never
to be seen again! The old
man is gone!!! Hallelujah!!!
Paul and the majority of the
early church walked in this. You can
too!!!
Disclaimer:
This is a non-denominational library website
that seeks to answer the question, "So -just
how do I enter His Rest?", but please
understand that the theology of holiness is
much wider than just answering this
question. I do my best so that believers
from every background may feel at home, but of
course, I cannot really succeed. Please
understand that the material is designed to be
evangelistic and experiential.
It is to clear the way for believers of every
stripe to enter into the peerless experience
of His Rest, rather than promoting any flavour
of doctrine -or even doctrine itself.
Doctrine is important, but there is always
more to learn. His Rest is the prize, while
doctrine is a man-made tool meant to
help us get there, and beyond. The Word
remains faithful and true, but our ways of
misunderstanding it are endless -especially
when we have not yet experienced what it is
referring to. I have taken great pains to
clarify the material but still you may run
into problems. Refer to the FAQ pages, read my
book "How to Enter His Rest" on the Entry
Directions page or email me for a specific
reference. I answer my email..... tplumb
at telusplanet.net
This is a
serious website that deals with
the conventional gospel, and then
quickly goes beyond it to deal
with matters that all will find
challenging. It will be new
to most although it comes to us
from antiquity. Your
knowledge and faith will be
stretched and increased. I
hope your experience will be also. In
these days of promiscuous
indoctrination at every turn, I
encourage you to be like the
Bereans in Acts 17:11, and search
the Scriptures daily to see if
these things are so. Like
those worthies, do not give up, and you will be
commended by the Lord as
they were.
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