the Harlot Church

In the second month in the year 2006 the word of the Lord came unto me, telling me to shave my privy parts and to mourn for His church. Again, God commanded me to gird my loins with rags and the Holy Spirit took me to the back side of the largest church in the state, where the Living Christ commanded me to prophesy. Thus I stood, clothed with nothing but rags about my loins, and declared the word of the Almighty God.

Therefore, hear the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, O harlot church, “I have raised unto Myself a people, a church from all nations, tribes, and tongues. I found you when you were not a people, guilty and filthy, lying in your own blood, stained with sin, without natural beauty, and rejected by the world. I picked you up, and I clothed you. I covered you in My righteousness and arrayed you with My beauty. You were to be for Me a bride of intimacy, lovely and holy, feasting on the delicacies of My kingdom, emptied of yourself and filled with My Spirit. I put a ring upon your finger and I called you My own. But O how you have turned,” says the Lord Almighty.

“Therefore, does My servant stand before you as a sign, for I have seen your nakedness, and you have uncovered your shame before the nations, exposing yourself to all who will see. You have covered yourself with a righteousness that is no righteousness at all. You have played the harlot with the world, committing fornication with all who will have you. You have taken of My holy things and set them before the idols of your heart, cutting yourself off from My mercy. When I called there was no one to answer. When I cried My bride turned a deaf ear. She has run away with swift feet, and with a faster step the more I beckoned. You have been as an adulterous woman, refusing the husband of her youth, only to embrace multitudes of men who use her and cast her away. You have run to and fro throughout the streets in search of anyone who will serve your ends of sin. You have built unto yourself a house; it is a house of whoredoms, where songs arise, but not by My Spirit, where prophets prophesy, but not by Me, where shepherds feed sheep, but not with My word. Your whoredoms are the ways of the world with which you have committed fornication, O rebellious people.

“You have turned to Me the back, and therefore have I turned My back to you until you turn back to Me,” says the Lord of heaven and earth to His church in America. “Your light has grown dim for want of oil, and your lamp will I remove if you do not repent,” cries the Lord Jesus Christ. “I will not hear your songs, your prayers are an abomination to Me, and when you kneel down to pray I will not listen. For you have closed your ears, and refused to hear Me. You have gone astray by the evil ways of your own heart, forsaking My throne for your house of whoredoms. Come, I say, come to Me, and I will yet receive you,” says the Lord God Almighty.

“You, O church, have loved to have it so, when you wander from house to house, from movie house to whorehouse, from iniquity to iniquity, erecting great edifices, but not for My glory. Therefore, shall you be shaven from head to toe, and My glory shall depart from you, for that which should have been for your honor shall be taken away when I depart,” says the Lord. “O that My people had hearkened unto Me when I called. I should have lifted you up to be with Me, where you would reign with your King in righteousness. But you wanted to rule yourself, and have become the servants of sin. Therefore shall your nakedness be discovered before all those who are around about you. Your poverty and your shame will I lay bare for all to see, as you stand naked before Me, clothed scantily with filthy rags, defiled and wretched. Then will all who are around you mock and scoff. The world will laugh and delight itself in your ruin, because you have forgotten whence you came and whither I was taking you. I the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Eternal God, should have had in you a bride of love for My glory, but you refused Me, running naked in the night, playing the harlot with all who would partake of your fornications. Your idolatrous rebellion shall be your ruin, O harlot church. For in Me did you have a Friend, a Bridegroom and a King, but you have cast yourself away from My Presence, to be present with murderers, whoremongers and thieves. Who will come, who will turn, who will hear what the Spirit of God says to the churches in America?”

And the same night the Father in heaven took me to a park, where He commanded me to tear off the rags wherewith I was clothed and to walk into the water. As I emerged from the water I covered my nakedness with a white towel, at which time the word of the Lord came unto me, and God said, “Return to Me, O harlot church, and I will have you for Myself once again. Turn from your own ways, forsake your sins, and seek My face. I will surely wash you with the water of My word, and with pure water will you be cleansed. I will remove from you the rags of perversion, self-interest, and idolatry, and I will clothe you with beautiful white linen that has been washed in My blood,” says the Lamb of God. “You have spent yourself for things of nought and given yourself to that which does not profit. Your rebellious heart has turned your righteousness into uncleanness and impurity. Your fragrance and beauty have become a stench and terrible hideousness. Return, return, turn from the broad path of destruction. Cast yourself upon the narrow way of life everlasting, and I will cause your light to shine from the throne of My glory in all directions, for all to see. And you will again be a light and reflection of Me, the lamp of My majesty” says the Lord Who dwells in unapproachable light, the King of kings, the God of all might. “You will burn as a raging flame ignited by the fire of My jealous love, moving about on the wings of My Spirit wheresoever I will carry you. You will fly and you will see that I will have for Myself a bride, revived, called from captivity. Live! Yea, I cry, Live, O dead church, for I will revive you as My wife,” says the Living Lord of Life.

In November 2006, Ted Haggard was removed as lead pastor of New Life Church and resigned as leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, acknowledging adulterous and homosexual relations with a man and drug use.

To Know Him

We can do so many things in the church. We can sing songs. We can preach sermons. We can listen to sermons. We can serve in Sunday School. We can have fellowship. We can study the Bible. We can sing in the choir. But I am learning what it is like to see all this going on without skipping a beat, and yet in the fulness of activity we miss the only thing that really matters.

To know Christ and Him crucified...
How desperately we need to receive from the Father a new revelation of His majesty in such splendor that we will tremble once again, that we will learn to fear Him once again, that we will shake to the very core of our souls with the understanding of Who He is and all He has done to have for Himself a people. Do you dare plead with David, "Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name" (Psalm 86:11)?

Does God want to dwell in your church? Can He look from the height of His sanctuary and see a people, large or small, that He will sing over with indescribable delight? Or does He turn away with grief every time we meet, because we have not His fear in our hearts? We have our fancy buildings, our numbers may be growing, we may even meet for prayer once a week, but is this what the Living God wants? A people who say, "Look what we have built for You, Lord! Isn't it magnificent?", whether they be external structures or internal agendas. We have our conferences, our missions weeks, our prayer meetings, and we have forgotten that all of this means nothing if Jesus Christ does not reign as LORD in all of it, down to the smallest, most seemingly insignificant of details. Why else would a church cancel its youth service for the Super Bowl without a second thought? Leonard Ravenhill had it right when he said that there is indeed a king in America, whose name is Sport and his wife is Entertainment. And with sadness in His heart, tears in His everseeing eyes, Jesus Christ responds, "The heaven [is] my throne, and the earth [is] my footstool: where [is] the house that ye build unto me? and where [is] the place of my rest? For all those [things] hath mine hand made, and all those [things] have been, saith the LORD: but to this [man] will I look, [even] to [him that is] poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word" (Isaiah 66:1-2). Can God say of your church, of your family, of your individual life, "This [is] my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it" (Psalm 132:14). Or do we turn Him away, and effectually say, while walking the world's way, "Sorry, but there is no room in the inn"?

We have taken for granted the promises of Jesus Christ, thinking that by quoting them over and over again, we can somehow fulfill them with our rhetoric or our gimmicks. As if declaring, "We are gathered in the Name of Christ, so He is in our midst," can actually make it so. How dare we say, "for Christ's sake", for it is not for Him at all anymore. Do we understand what it cost Paul to be able to utter those words without guile on his lips? "From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus" (Galatians 6:17, also see 1Corinthians 4:10, 2Corinthians 12:10). God has always been after one thing: A holy Bride for Himself, whose very existence is one of an ever-arising aroma of the Son to the Father. He has sought from the creation's inception a man, a woman that He can call His own, who will be satisfied with nothing other than satisfying the Father's heart. He wants those who will be His prisoners, captives of His love whose lives He can waste in any way He sees fit (See Mark 14:3-9).

But we want our programs, we want the safety of knowing exactly what will happen in our services as we ostensibly worship away any vestige of God's presence. God departs while we sing, because instead of a pleasing fragrance a stench finds its way into His nostrils. "Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; [it is] iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear [them]" (Isaiah 1:13-14). We have made God so weary with our vain religious offerings that while we sing "holy, holy, holy", the Holy Spirit cries, "INIQUITY!"

It is a strange thing to think that while we purport to be doing the very thing required of us by a holy God, we can actually heap judgement upon our own heads by speaking His name in vain. Oh, not as a curse like the world does, but by not truly desiring to meet with God for His glory alone. We tread upon the poor every time we reject the Presence of Christ in our meetings, because that is the only place they can find true and abiding riches. We cast off the widow by saying "no thank you" to God's invitation into His throne room in our pathetic little meetings, because He alone can be the Husband they need. Do we really want to hear God's voice? Then be ready to receive whatever word He will speak, for good or for evil, for blessing or for cursing, for encouragement or correction. We say, "I have always served You, God." He says, "Repent." What if the fire of God's jealous love were to touch your life's most inward parts? What would be revealed by that fire?

My Jesus, to know You... Do we really want to know Him and Him crucified? It will cost everything, dear brother and sister. No more claim of independence. No more plans that cannot be disrupted or utterly disposed of. No more walking our own ways. No more demands laid before God's footstool for our own perceived "needs". No more me. No more... It cost Jesus Christ everything to purchase for Himself that Bride from captivity. Do you think it will cost us anything less? No, it will cost everything to be everything God has longed for in a people amongst whom He can walk with delight, finding nothing worthy of censure.

There is nothing else worth living for. There is nothing else worth dying for. If only we will learn what it means to be crucified with Christ that we might belong irrevocably to Him. "And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Galatians 5:24). The flesh with every self-asserting and self-serving "but I..." must go if we are to know Him in all verity.

Still He calls, to this very hour Jesus Christ calls for all who will come and belong to the King, accepting the full weight of responsibility that comes with being a son or daughter of His Father. In this experienced reality there will be no greater delight than to please His heart. And every blow and accusation of insanity with which the church and the world strike cannot deter from God's will any longer. As His glory has become the one lodestar of your life, your soul aches the simple prayer of the the pauper, "Lord Jesus, just to be with You...". The Eternal Christ responds, "You have I made a prince and a priest unto My Father" (Revelation 1:5-6). Will you be as jealous for God's glory as He is Himself? There is no other way than to fling yourself at the nail-pierced feet of the Son of God and never depart from that place, abandoning yourself completely to Almighty God and demanding nothing in return. Your only desire henceforth is to minister day and night unto the Lord of majesty, beholding His face in intimacy. This is true communion, this is what it is to know Him.