The Clearing Podcast - Where Eagles Fly

1857! By the year 1857, the effects of the Second Great Awakening were starting to be forgotten.  Suddenly another great wave of awakening took over in Ireland, Scotland and the U.S.  Again, for the third time, it was as though God were engineering things trans-continentally.  In Charleston, the Holy Spirit fell in Anson Street Presbyterian […]

Finney and Abolition. During the waning years of the Second Great Awakening, God raised up a lawyer in New York who was profoundly used, for a decade (1820’s) to bring whole towns to Christ.  Finney was not a devout abolitionist, yet a great many of those converted under his ministry became the leading abolitionists of […]

The Second Great Awakening. The awakening of 1799 in America (paralleled by the Clapham Sect movement in London) was far greater in breadth, length and influence than that which had happened 65 years before. One of the most influential leaders was a Presbyterian named James McGready who stirred up prayer for “the worst place in […]

Slave Prayer – Following Gabriel’s Rebellion in 1800, it became illegal for slaves to assemble throughout the southern states for “religious” purposes (because the cause of the rebellion was stated to have been “Methodists, Presbyterians and Frenchmen.”) Nonetheless, slaves were all the more diligent to come together for Christian prayer, and even contrived to pray […]

Robert Carter III – A prime example of the stirring of indignation against slavery came in the 18th century. Robert “King” Carter had been one of the most notorious plantation owners to own slaves in Virginia. But his grandson Robert—after his conversion to Christ at the hands of a Baptist evangelist—could not justify to his […]

John Newton – While power and might Christians championed the institution of slavery, spiritually awakened Christians began to sense that God wanted to use them to destroy this institution, as had St. Patrick in Ireland during the fifth century. John Newton, who had been pulled into slave trafficking in Africa as a young man, devoted […]

The Great Awakening – Beginning in 1735, the concept of spiritual awakening went to a whole new level. God showed that He could awaken several nations simultaneously! An extraordinary downpouring of the presence of God in Northampton, Massachussetts spread to dozens of other communities in America. Then, as several pastors in the region of Cambuslang, […]

Protestant Persecutions – The spiritual awakening of Scotland could not go unopposed. As King James VI of Scotland became (also) King James I of England (thus creating a new entity called Great Britain), he championed the Divine Right of Kings—meaning, he considered himself—not Jesus—as the de facto head of the Church. In doing this, He […]

Scottish Awakening – The Lollard movement also went north, to Scotland, where it eventually produced the Scottish Reformation. Leaders in Scotland, called into the prayer of faith in God’s word, were to experience spiritual regeneration on a scale not known for centuries. During the time of George Wishart, John Knox, John Welch and Andrew Melville, […]

Moravians! In the 14th century, there emerged in England a grass-roots movement known as the Lollard movement, resulting from translations of the Bible into English at Oxford. John Wycliffe became associated with this and provided some leadership for it. This back to the Bible movement was picked up by John Hus in Bohemia, leading to […]

God’s Track Record – What we are tracing here is not Church history, but the track record of the mighty deeds of God over the last 2000 years. However, there have been four movements that have tried to cover up those mighty deeds, making it difficult for us to see and acknowledge them: Roman Catholicism, […]

Mediaeval Mercies – During the Middle Ages, God reached out to the Roman Catholic Church with two monastic movements, to remind people of the original “by my Spirit” vision. The first was the Cistercian movement (led eventually by Bernard of Clairvaux), which sought to revive the original Rule of St. Benedict, which was based on […]

The Middle Ages – Power and might Christianity corrupted the Church of the Middle Ages, until the whole concept of “Christianity” became unrecognizable.  Control of the Papacy fell to a few Italian families who vied for control of vast wealth and influence.  In the end, a second “Vatican” was established at Avignon in France, with […]

The Next 700 Years. The advance of the Kingdom of God can be seen as a conflict between two versions of Christianity.  During the first 700 years, “by my Spirit” Christianity prevailed in the West, up to the Synod of Whitby in 644 A.D. “Power and might” Christianity prevailed during the Middle Ages, leading to […]

The Triumph of Rome. For fifty years, there were two contrasting Christian churches in Britain: a “power and might” church and a “by my Spirit” church, growing side-by-side.  This unstable situation was resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 644 A.D., in which the Roman Church edged out the Celts, who began the slow and […]

Reintroducing Rome.  Just as Aidan (from Iona) established the outreach to Anglo-Saxons at Lindisfarne, Rome came back into the picture in 597 A.D.  It’s first archbishop, a Benedictine monk named Augustine, set up shop at Canterbury, and challenged the Celts to accept his authority.  Lacking the one quality (humility) that would have won their allegiance, […]

Columba and Kentigern.  After establishing 30 houses of prayer in Ireland, and after making a pilgrimage to honor Martin at Tours, the hot-headed Columba created some serious problems in Ireland—and was banished from his homeland in the middle of the sixth century.  Founding the prayer community at Iona, Columba succeeded in bringing the Picts and […]

Patrick and the Irish. As a teenager, Patrick was whisked away from his home in Dumbarton, Scotland, to be a slave in Ireland.  This improbable beginning set him on a journey of prayer, which God would build into one of the greatest examples of Kingdom transformation the world has ever seen—as described by Patrick himself […]

Evagrius, Cassian and Germanus. Evagrius of Pontus, experiencing the temptations of wealth and power in the Byzantine Church, fled to the deserts of Egypt, where he became the leader of the spiritual descendants of Anthony at Nitria.  Two men—Cassian and Germanus—attached themselves to him, then carried the teaching of the Desert Fathers into Gaul, and […]

The Early Celts. The Desert Fathers, beginning with Anthony, continued to live by the original “by my Spirit” pattern Jesus modeled out for them.  Martin of Tours picked that up from the biography of Anthony by Athanasius, and passed it along to Ninian, who planted it in Scotland in 397 A.D.  Scotland became a matchstick […]

Power and Might. When Constantine moved to make Christianity the official “religion” of Rome, Pope Sylvester I assumed that he was to form an alliance with the Roman emperor.  In this way—beginning in 313 A.D.—Christianity stopped being a “by my Spirit” kingdom, and began to function as a “power and might” religion. My teaching shows […]

By My Spirit. Jesus fulfilled the ancient king-prophecies, but declared that His kingdom was not “of this world.”  It was not a “power and might” kingdom, but a “by my Spirit” kingdom.  My teaching articulates seven features of how His Kingdom operates—the basic patterns of real Christianity, which entered into the Roman world to transform […]

The Hope of Rome.  The ancient Hebrew prophecies spoke of a new kingdom that God would instigate during the fourth great world empire of the ancient world: the Roman Empire.  The great promise of that empire was this: that they would civilize the surrounding “barbarian” nations by conquering them.  Caesar began the process of “civilization” […]

In experimental Christianity, you find something in the Bible, then you ask God to teach you how to walk in the reality of it—to walk by faith. Early on, I was confronted with the gift of tongues described in the Bible. I give a little history of this gift, and explain why I don’t teach […]

When we come together with other people, the dynamics of prayer changes dramatically. That is why it’s best to follow the pattern that Jesus gave us for together prayer. Start with worship. Then focus on the Kingdom of God—God’s will, before asking for anything for ourselves. We also clear our hearts of any residue of […]