M. James Jordan - The Ancient Road Rediscovered: What the Early Church knew

The Ancient Road

Rediscovered

What the Early Church knew...

M. James Jordan

Acknowledgements

This book has come into being as a result of many years of seeking the Lord for help and answers to the struggles that my wife Denise and I have been through together. It is usually the desperate heart that cries out to God the loudest. Most of the things written here have come to me by direct revelation. The chapter on The Two Trees came to Denise first and we have agreed to include it here as I see and teach it.

My thanks first and foremost go to Denise who has loved me beyond reason and been so patient with me over more than forty years we have walked together as we have learnt these things.

I also want to especially thank Stephen Hill who has put the longest hours searching many spoken messages and collating the salient points into intelligible text. His ability and concentration levels amaze me.

I am grateful to Alice Adams and Tom Carroll who have given of their effort and time with willing hearts. Alice for her copy-editing and proofreading work, and Tom for his work in design and presentation. Thank you.

I wish to acknowledge the wider family of Fatherheart Ministries around the world with whom I have lived in varying states of community life over the last seventeen years. In the stillness of this family life, I have found love and rest enough to see things that I wouldnt have been able to see otherwise.

I am grateful to all of those who have had some part to play in my life over the years. My life is not only the product of the Holy Spirits work in me but also the product of those who have walked with me. Even those who were seemingly against me at times have played a part in who I am now. All things have worked together for good for me and I am grateful for all the ways I have been ministered to by the Body of Christ.

The encouragement to get this material into book form has come from so many people in different places around the world. It is impossible to mention them all by name.

My hope is that the efforts of the many people who put this book together will be a joy to our Heavenly Father and a blessing to all those who take the time to read it. I submit it to you all dear brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ.

M. James Jordan

The Ancient Road

A few years ago I had a vision of a knight on a white horse dancing through a deep and ancient forest. During that vision, which I describe in detail in my book Sonship , it suddenly became clear to me that I was standing on an ancient road. Winding through the forest, it was almost invisible, being so overgrown with weeds and grass. But it was a road on which the Holy Spirit (represented by the white horse) was a frequent traveller. Amazingly, this road on which the white horse danced was seldom used by anyone else.

What is that ancient road and where does it come from? Equally importantly, where is that road going? To what destination is it headed?

I now wonder if the Gospel that most of us have been exposed to is actually, in the words of Paul in Galatians 1:6, another gospel. Much what we have heard has not really been good news. Thousands have stopped going to church because they no longer enjoy it. What is happening? What has gone wrong? My belief is that we have had a version of Christianity that claims to be good news but actually isnt. We have been so indoctrinated that even when we are burning out in our service to the Lord we still gasp that it is good news. This is ludicrous. It just doesnt add up.

Many Christians have discovered that the kind of Gospel they have assimilated has driven them into a striving, sweating spirituality that only leads to burnout and is energised by obligation, duty, guilt and condemnation. There is even so-called Christian teaching on how to avoid burnout. How ridiculous is that! As if burnout is to be expected as a routine part of Christian life. Let me say very clearly: If you are on the road to burnout you are on the wrong road completely. There isnt a fine line between burnout and serving the Lord. There is a gaping chasm! Burnout comes from working in the power of the flesh - there is no argument about it! You cannot burn out if you are walking and working in the Spirit. Jesus said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

I do not believe there is any freedom, joy or rest except in the love of the Father. We have been living a Christianity that is handicapped by a lack of revelation of the Father. To put it simply, we have been living a Christianity based on two revelations; the revelation of Jesus as Saviour and Lord, and the revelation of the Holy Spirits indwelling. This is like trying to balance on a two-legged stool. To put it another way, the foundation of our Christianity is incomplete. Something vital is missing. To date we have had only a conceptual understanding rather than a revelation of the Father. What is more, we have had a flawed understanding of who the Father is.

When the Holy Spirit hit Toronto in 1994 it heralded a new day in the Spirit. There was a new openness to the revelation of the Father. Prior to 1994, preaching about the Father, which I had been doing since 1979, was like trying to push water uphill with a rake. It just didnt take hold in peoples hearts. With the exception of Youth With A Mission, who had invited Jack Winter to minister freely, my experience was that the revelation of the Father had little or no impact. When the Holy Spirit hit Toronto however, that changed overnight. There was a climate change in the spiritual atmosphere around the world. Those who had been touched by what was happening in Toronto suddenly became open and hungry to know about the Fathers love for them. That change was very obvious to me because I was one of the few who had been preaching about and walking in an experience of the Fathers love. A watershed emerged in the history of the Church.

Twenty years have passed since then and it has been extraordinary to witness how God is revealing Himself as Father right across the globe. This revelation has reached every denomination and every stream within the Body of Christ and we are hearing testimonies of how it is reaching beyond the Church into the hearts of individuals from every level of society. Of course, not everyone who was touched by what happened in Toronto really grasped the true significance of it. Many people focused only on the physical effects of the presence of God in meetings.

I believe however, that as we look back, we will see that 1994 was the year when the revelation of the Father began to be reestablished in the Church. The year 1994 was the beginning of a new and significant era in the history of the Church. There was a mighty outpouring of the power of God then, which was wonderful. However, if you have a move of the Spirit without a revelation of the Word it will inevitably dissipate and eventually disappear. The Spirit and the Word must go together to build the Church. There is a revelation of the Word that has followed in the wake of the outpouring of the Spirit in Toronto. The river of the Spirit is also a river of revelation in the Word. Personally speaking, I have felt as if I have been standing in a river of revelation for the last twenty years. The revelation of the Word is coming forth in an increasingly fresh way. The centre of gravity in Christianity as we know it has shifted. The ancient road of Jesus and the Apostles is being rediscovered.