Jesus Christ is the Eternal I AM

Prosperity and Health, Death and Poverty

2010-12-20T15:21:00.000-08:00

On the night of December 19, 2010, Pastor Wendell Smith of the City Church died, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke, saying, Set your house in order, for within one year's time you will die, and I will place another in your office.

"Correction [is] grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: [and] he that hateth reproof shall die." Proverbs 15:10

On the twenty-first day of January in the year 2009 I Bryan went at the command of God to the home of Pastor Wendell Smith of the City Church. At the time of the setting of the sun I knocked on the front door of his house in Kirkland, Washington. Pastor Wendell Smith opened the door and I introduced myself and informed him that I had come with a word from the Lord about his illness. He replied, "Okay, this is not really the proper way to do that." I stated that I would like to read the letter to him. He responded that it was not healthy for him to stand in the cold doorway, and asked if I could mail it to him. I informed him that I would rather hand it to him and requested at least one more time permission to read him the letter. Pastor Wendell Smith again declined. When I could see that he would not suffer me to read the word of God to him I placed the letter back in the envelope with the letter delivered to him at the City Church in May of 2006. As I did, I looked up at Wendell Smith and said these words, "The Lord Jesus Christ has sent me to set before you the way of life and the way of death, the way of blessing and the way of cursing. Therefore, choose life and obey the voice of the Lord your God, to love Him and to serve Him only, that He may prolong your days upon the earth." Upon speaking these words I handed the envelope containing both letters to him. Wendell Smith stated that this was the first word the Lord spoke to him after he became sick. He asked after my name and I told him again, informing him that my name and email address were on the letter that was first delivered to him at the church about two and a half years earlier. I turned to leave and the door was closed, as the sky grew darker at the setting of the sun.

These are the words contained in the letter delivered to Pastor Wendell Smith on Wednesday, January 21, 2009.

To Pastor Wendell Smith of the City Church:

This is what the Lord Jesus Christ has said concerning you:

I have given you space to repent of this vile doctrine of prosperity with a purpose. As yet you have refused to receive My word to you concerning this matter. Therefore, this is what I say to you, Pastor Wendell Smith: There comes a time when things have reached their usefulness and they are good for nothing but to be thrown away. Therefore, hear My word to you: if you do not repent of this doctrine of prosperity with a purpose, you will have reached your usefulness in My kingdom, and I will remove you from the earth. Set your house in order, for within one year's time you will die, and I will place another in your office. You have sought for healing, you have pleaded for mercy, you have confessed wholeness. But it shall be to no avail if you refuse to return to Me in this matter about which I have spoken so clearly.

You have built for yourself a habitation in the earth. You have excelled in wisdom and wealth. But your hands are defiled, your wealth shall be your poverty, your wisdom shall be your foolishness. What was for your praise amongst men will be your undoing. There is another who competes with Me in your heart, whose appeal is so beguiling. Wealth, wealth, where is your wealth, Wendell? Health, health, where is your health, Wendell? You have forgotten the true riches that are in Me, says the Lord Jesus Christ. I am your Reward, I am your Treasure, I AM and there is no other. I the LORD should have been your strength, but what was strength for you will be weakness. You have desired thirty more years, but you shall not know thirty, neither shall you know fifteen. Your days have drawn to an end if you will not repent.

Would you receive My chastisement as a son, or will you turn your back on Me as a bastard? I am your Father, says the Lord God of heaven and earth. I have loved you with an everlasting love, and I will restore you if you would only turn from this profane teaching you have promulgated in My church for far too long. This disease cannot remain amidst My people and not result in death. Neither can this cancer remain in your body and not take your life, unless I heal you. I have afflicted you in My faithfulness, My son. But if you will not repent of this pernicious doctrine you preach to My people, I will remove you from your place in the earth and raise up another in your stead. He shall be a praise before Me, but his heart will I try as I have tried yours. And he too will face this issue, he too will be confronted with the word of his God, he too must give account before Me for that which he will teach. And what shall be the end of his praise?

On January 22, 2009 I received an email from Troy S. Anderson of the City Church, telling me to read the attached letter. The attachment contained in the email was this letter:

Re: The City Church and Pastor Wendell Smith

Dear Mr. Hulen:

Your letters to Pastor Wendell Smith commanding him to repent of certain Bible teachings, and warning him that if [he] does not repent he will die within the year, were hostile, inappropriate and threatening. Your attempt to enter his Kirkland home yesterday evening to deliver your "message" both heightened the level of your threats and demonstrated the potential danger you pose to Pastor Smith and to The City Church.

The Smith residence is private property. On behalf of the Smiths, I hereby notify you that you are not to come to their residence again and that if you do so you will be trespassing.

The City Church's campuses are also private property. You are not to attend any of our church services, small groups, or other functions or to come onto any of our church properties. If you do so you will be trespassing.

Finally, you are not to send letters or emails to or otherwise attempt to contact Pastor Wendell Smith or any other City Church pastor, employee, or member.

We have discussed your threats and actions with the Kirkland police department and have made them aware that you do not have permission to come to the Smith residence or the church campuses. We have police security at each of our locations and ongoing relationships with the city police departments.

You may contact me by mail or by email for the limited purpose of discussing any questions you have about the contents of this letter. My mailing address is listed on this letterhead and my email address is troy.anderson@thecity.org.

Sincerely,

Troy S. Anderson, J.D.

General Counsel

The City Church

I answered not a word to Troy Anderson or the City Church.

(originally posted 2/3/2010)

The City Church

2010-12-20T15:20:00.000-08:00

The word of the Lord Jesus Christ came to me, telling me to go to the City Church and proclaim His word to the saints of the City Church. Thus I went on the 22nd of October in the year 2009 on the first night of the Prosperity With a Purpose Conference and stood outside of the Kirkland campus proclaiming the word of the Lord to all who came and went from the church. From about 6:00 pm until about 7:30 pm I stood at the entering in of the church property, prophesying all that the Lord God Almighty had sent me to speak. Early in the morning on Sunday, October 25th, Pastor Aaron Haskins of the City Church died. After hearing the news of his death, I fell upon my face and cried out, Ah Lord God, will You yet have mercy upon this church?

This is the word of the Lord that He sent me to speak outside of the City Church in Kirkland, Washington on the night of October 22, 2009:

The High God has spoken, the Holy One has uttered His voice, His word resounds from heaven above to the inhabitants of the earth, to the saints of the City Church. This is what the Lord has spoken to you: Come out from among the people, My people! Flee, get you out from among them, and be separate, declares the Lord. Prosperity shall prosper you no longer, for I have seen your ways amongst men, your dealings in the earth. How high would you seek to climb in the success of a system that is corrupt to the core? You want wealth, you want worship, you want the ways of God; and you want them in that order.

There is a mixture amongst My people, says the Lord Jesus Christ. It is an unholy mixture--the holy combined with the profane. Her leaders and those led of them desire worldly gain. I look upon the City Church and I see a people whose lust consumes them, whose passions push them further away from Me with every breath, with every heartbeat. I have raised you up, Oh church of My heart, but you have corrupted yourselves, embracing another master, whose ways allure and attract, distracting you from your First Love. You cannot walk in the ways of God and in the ways of man, serving Me and serving mammon. Away with it! Away with your lusts, for you are enflamed in your heart, burning for another lord whose love will swallow you up in death.

What profit shall you gain, who have labored for the wind, wanting more and more, an insatiable desire for another lord? Your pastors have led you astray. Your teachers have taught you to walk another way. I have judged them, and their sentence is set. Wendell Smith, your view of death is deficient, thinking it to be when you have breathed your last breath. But this I tell you, that as Adam died in the day he ate of the fruit, so it is with you. In the year you have refused to repent, you have died already, being removed from the holy and high calling unto which I called you. I have placed a man of praise in your office, stripping you of your authority and placing your mantle upon another, says the Lord God Almighty, the High King of heaven. With your removal from the office unto which you were called you have died the death of a man who refuses to repent. For toward rebellion and prosperity is your heart bent.

You would think to yourself, If it be the word of the Lord, let it come now. But My word has passed and you have not perceived it; it will surely come, but will you know it? As Adam you have tasted of the forbidden fruit, and as Adam you have died in the year of rebellion. Sin came by one man into the world, and by you, Wendell Smith, has sin entered the City Church. You have persisted in perverting the gospel of Christ, despising My correction, refusing repentance from your crooked way. You have been honored by men the world over, but I assure you of this, though you have sought to justify yourself before men, that which is highly esteemed among them is abomination in the eyes of God. The saints of the City Church will weep and wail, wondering why their pastor has died. For I will remove from them their glory, the man raised up to raise them up, who will fall down, having fallen from the height of his calling, loving another more than Me.

Oh, saints of the City Church, you have lived lavishly and in luxury, dancing delicately between two opinions. You would rather listen to a lie along the lines of your prosperity than hear the truth about the blessedness of poverty. But your pastor's disease is a sign to you of the ravages of prosperity in the midst of My body. It is not yours that I want, it is you, says the Lord Jesus Christ. What could you give to Me that is not already Mine? My covenant with Abraham was not for wealth in the world, but for My Glory in his Seed. And so he rejoiced in the seeing of My day. The price of that Glory was My blood shed in poverty, but will you see as did he? Would you walk another way? What could you want more than Me? I am God Almighty.

On the sixth day of June in the year 2009, I, Bryan, was joined in union unto Anna Marlene as a sign and portent from Almighty God. Anna Marlene was called of the Lord out of the City Church for its perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ. On the tower I stand, from the mountain height of God I cry in love. Hear the word of the Lord: on the selfsame day the announcement was made on the website of the City Church that Judah Smith would be given the office of his father as lead pastor. Who has ears to hear, let him hear. Come out from among them, says the Lord, and be separate. Touch not the unclean thing, and I will dwell among you, and you will be My people and I will be your God.

Beginning on the night of November 21, 2009 until early in the morning of November 22, 2009, I, Bryan, and my helper in the ministry of Christ delivered these words to each of the City Church campuses throughout the Seattle area; at the North Sound, at Alderwood, at the University District, at Belltown, at the Plateau, and at Kirkland. The word of the Lord was posted on the doors of each of the churches. The following week I was contacted by Troy Anderson of the City Church, as was my father.

After I responded to his request to contact him Troy Anderson sent me an email which included these words:

I assume you already received my January 22, 2009 [letter] that I sent after you came to the Smith's house to deliver your message to Pastor Wendell. I have attached another copy. We have no choice but to consider you a safety risk and someone whose behavior we cannot predict. I ask that you please comply with that letter by staying away from the church and not attempting to contact us or deliver any more of your messages. Thank you.

Mr. Anderson's email to my father included the following words:

In January this year I contacted you about your son Bryan's letters and behavior toward The City Church, and in particular toward our founding pastor Wendell Smith. In January Bryan came to the Smith's residence and delivered a letter discussing God's judgment on Pastor Wendell and the church...In October someone stood outside our Kirkland church location as people pulled into the parking lot to attend a conference at the church and "prophesied" against the church. I did not personally view him doing this but our facilities staff has a picture of Bryan and believe that it was him...This past weekend the attached letter was delivered to our Seattle church locations. It appears to be from Bryan. I am concerned by the tone of this letter and in particular what he might do. My letter to him in January advised him that if he came onto any of our church locations he would be trespassing...I would like to communicate to him my concerns about what actions he might take and to tell him that we have heard his "message" and do not want to hear from him again.

On December 14, 2009 I responded to Troy Anderson by email:

Mr. Troy Anderson,

The way of life and the way of death, the way of blessing and the way of cursing has been set before Pastor Wendell Smith. He will choose for himself the way he takes. There are those who have spoken to Wendell regarding his healing. If they have spoken out of the mouth of the Lord, let them pray for Wendell Smith that he may be healed. But know for certain that as God has done, so shall He do, and the word the Lord has spoken regarding His servant will surely come to pass, that all the City Church may know the ravages of the doctrine of prosperity with a purpose in the midst of the body of Christ. My messages are not mine, but His that sent me. If anyone will do His will, he shall know of the messages, whether they are of God, or I speak of myself. Let wisdom be justified of all her children.

a bondslave of the Lord Jesus Christ and yours,
Bryan W. Hulen

(originally posted 2/3/2010)

The Disease of Prosperity

2010-02-03T23:58:00.000-08:00

May 4, 2006

Dear Pastor Wendell Smith,

I write these words at the command of Almighty God as His servant to you. Please know that I have no agenda or desire, save that you would live wholly and only for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, remaining a faithful minister and shepherd in His Kingdom. If you should have any questions regarding what is written below, please do not hesitate to contact me at bhulen@gmail.com.

Thank you for your most solemn consideration of all that the Holy Spirit is speaking in this hour to you and to the body of Christ at the City Church.

Sincerely,

Bryan W. Hulen

“Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O LORD, according unto thy word. Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments. Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word. Thou [art] good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes. The proud have forged a lie against me: [but] I will keep thy precepts with [my] whole heart. Their heart is as fat as grease; [but] I delight in thy law. [It is] good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes. The law of thy mouth [is] better unto me than thousands of gold and silver” (Psalm 119:65-72).
_____________________

"There is a disease that is ravaging My body in your midst, of which your current struggle and affliction is a symbol and picture," says the Lord Jesus Christ. "Wendell, I have called and chosen you. I the Lord have appointed you unto the ministry in which you now stand as a shepherd over My flock, to lead and to feed My people into My ways and with My Word. I have carried you through many trials and shown Myself faithful in all seasons. But as yet you have been unwilling to listen to My voice regarding this matter of which I now speak in a way more loudly than ever before in your life. Oh, how I have loved you, My child, My servant. But when will you turn to receive My call to repentance from this most pernicious promotion of the prosperity doctrine of deception that will destroy My people?"

Therefore, hear the word of the Lord unto you, Pastor Wendell Smith of the City Church:

"I have heard your cry in secret places, and I have seen your struggle when no one is around to comfort or console. You have wondered why this cancer now has stricken your body. I the Lord God of glory will tell you, My son. You have taught and promulgated a message that is false in the midst of My people. You have told them to prosper in the wealth of the world at the expense of eternal riches in Me. Are not all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge found in Me? With what shall you compare My glory? For what would you trade My Presence? Are not My words of greater worth than silver or gold, even the most precious of diamonds? I was sufficient for Abraham’s reward, but would you desire more than the friend of God, whose faith was accounted to him for righteousness, who became the father of the faithful? For My covenant is not a covenant of financial gain or covetousness, but My covenant is a covenant of blood, of love, of eternal life in Me of which My Spirit is the deposit," says the Lord Jesus Christ. "But this doctrine is a disease in My body that will produce death and preclude many from entering into My most holy way for them, even causing some to fall away to perdition."

"I the Lord your God have brought this affliction upon your body, as you are the pastor over My flock, to teach you and show you the toll that this false teaching will bring upon My church. It is a poison that will kill those who eat of it. With what shall a shepherd feed My sheep? The message of prosperity with a purpose will annul My purpose for you, the City Church, and make you unfruitful in My kingdom. This deadly doctrine I hate, I abhor, I despise and will uproot from My church in the last day, only to cast it into the fire of My judgement, that it may burn with all other words and ways of death in unquenchable fire for all eternity. The doctrine of prosperity that you teach will cause the City Church to wither as an old man incapable of producing sons or daughters," says the Lord God of mercy and judgement. "Am I not a Father to My people? Shall I not hold to account those who seduce and deceive My children? I cry from the midst of My throne that I will surely judge all who teach this doctrine, and I call you to repent. For these foolish teachings are the ways of the world cloaked in wisdom to the undiscerning heart, whose end shall be according to his works."

"And so I say to you, Wendell, return to Me, and I will heal you. Repent of this doctrine that will only cause My people to stumble and fall upon the high places unto which I have called them in Me," says the Shepherd of your soul. "I have afflicted you in My faithfulness that you might see the disease that is ravaging My body. For I am the Head above all things, and I love you more than you will ever know; but My church, My bride, is too precious to Me to allow this fateful and foolish thing, this salacious and shameful doctrine to remain among My people in this church I have raised up for My honor. For it is as a whorish and murderous woman calling out for whosoever will to come and partake of her fornications, only to kill the unsuspecting fool upon her bed of lust. She shows forth a strangely alluring and selfless mien. But she is altogether and only evil, a doctrine that slays the souls of men. You cannot love Me and the money that you say I give for the purposes contrived of men, who wish only to increase in this world's perishable possessions. Death begets death, and life begets life. Is it not My mercy that you remain to this day, and will it not be by grace unspeakable that I will heal you? But what will you do in the end thereof? Repent, return to Me, and I will restore you and carry you through this and all other trials you will face. For I am the Lord your God, the Eternal King, and I count you and the City Church so dear to Me, a precious and holy thing, a house wherein I desire to dwell in My glory," says the Lord Jesus Christ.

(original post date: 05/04/2006)

Would You Wash My Feet?

2008-09-03T05:35:00.000-07:00

Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God; He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe [them] with the towel wherewith he was girded...Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for [so] I am. If I then, [your] Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. ~John 13:3-5, 13-15

Have you seen Him, our Lord and Master disrobing of all His majesty before you, clothing Himself in humanity to come and wash your feet? The Sovereign of heaven and earth has descended from His high throne to arise within the heart of a man, a woman, a child as the Servant of all, His Divine Nature now displayed within plain, unimpressive, paltry human frames. With an holy eye and eternal view our Lord Jesus Christ set aside His primal Glory in order to cleanse a people, dirt, depravity, sin, stench, filth, profaneness and all unto Himself. There is a washing of water with the word that takes place within the bride of Christ that He is calling to Himself, and it is a purifying that is manifested marvellously in the washing of His disciples' feet. For this cleansing reveals one so much deeper, so much grander, so much more than we could ever know without the deepest drawing of the Holy Spirit into its comprehension. The Son of God, knowing that all things were His and all things placed under Him, set aside His outer clothing, stripped Himself to the undergarments with which He was girded, wrapped Himself in a towel, and picked up the feet of His own creation to wash them, to handle their sullied skin in His creative hands which were soon to be pierced, to dry them with the towel that now covered His own bare humanity.

Think of this eternal drama unfolding before the eyes of James and John and the rest of the followers of the Son of God. Whom does our Lord approach in the midst of His sacrificial servitude? None other than the soon to be deserter and denier of His holy Name. The Master gently takes those feet of a foundation stone of the church founded upon Himself as its Chief Cornerstone and begins to scrape off the dirt, immerse them in the water, rub His fingers between the toes, leaving no trace of earth's stains behind. Peter's protests would not prevail, for our Lord knew what position he held in His kingdom, but cleansing was necessary for him to enter his beatified place in the bride of Christ. Our Lord moves from disciple to disciple, soon to find the feet of the man in whom Satan was soon to take residence, our Master's very betrayer. The Almighty breathed His warm breath upon the feet belonging to the cold heart bound to the devil's influence, whose deceitful kiss led to His own arrest. And those feet, those toes, that man the Son of God washed, knowing what was to come. God looked up from below into the eyes of the son of perdition and washed his feet. Such Divine condescension declares in very deed the Love Nature of God as Lord and Master more perfectly than any other act in Christ's earthly life preceding the Cross.

Jesus Christ washed the feet of a deserter and a devil, but you will not wash the feet of a rebel. Our Lord and Master undressed, exposing His human frame in frailty and weakness, a frame that was to be broken by the hands of His own creation, crushed by His Father's bruising, and crucified by the princes of this world. The Son of God bore the mockery, the shame, the nakedness, the nails, the scoffing, the silence from the Father, and breathed His last breath as a Faithful High Priest and Lamb of Sacrifice. This is the consummate cleansing that was prophesied in that humbling act of the Holy One, Who exemplified our duty as His disciples. But would you drop your pride, would you set aside your position of authority, would you unclothe yourself of all pretense and sink down before men to wash their feet? It is not merely the feet of the man before you that you wash, it is the Feet that were pierced for you that you take up in your hands. Can you see His Face marred more than any man mirrored behind the visage of the one before you now? Until you can gaze upon the Beauty of Holiness unto Whom you are beholden in the washing of His disciples' feet, no matter their state before the Father, you will never be the servant God is seeking, you will never be the priest of the King of kings, you will never be the slave of the Son of God. Until you wash His disciples' feet you will never know Him as Lord and Teacher.

A Sacrifice Indeed

2008-05-09T00:12:00.000-07:00

"Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates, which the LORD thy God giveth thee: But at the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to place his name in, there thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 16:5-6).

Where would we like to offer the sacrifice? That question is never asked in the entirety of Scripture. We do not get to choose the place of our own martyrdom, nor do we have the luxury of determining what it is that we will give ourselves to in service to God. Too often we have approached the high and lofty Throne of God Almighty with hands full of something we deem worthy to be presented to Him, as if He needed anything from us; never realizing that the very thing we hold in our hands is the thing that stands as the greatest barrier between ourselves and God.

The commandment came to Moses and unto the children of Israel, "You cannot, you must not choose the place of your sacrifice. That prerogative belongs solely to Me." No man can choose for himself the place whereunto he would resort in the offering of a sacrifice to the Holy One, nor what is required as a sacrifice in that place. No woman has the right to state unto God the sacred locale of her offering of worship, nor the articles of life which are to be offered.

We have become smugly presumptuous in our approach to the Living Lord. But God knows us all too well. In teaching the disciples how to pray, Jesus made this weighty statement, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done..." This prayer will cause every fiber of our flesh to squirm and recoil at the suggestion that we are to be willingly and unequivocably yielded to a dominion that rules our entire way of thinking, our entire way of doing, our entire way of being. Much to the contrary of this abandonment of self-will to the will of our Father in heaven, we have stood afar off from the mount consumed with the fire of His Glory and said, "Here is what I offer. I assure You, God, it is most precious. See how much time and energy went into the preparation of this offering for You? How could You be anything but pleased with this tremendous sacrifice?" And the God of heaven and earth looks on with a fiery, holy gaze that reveals the sacrifice for what it really is--scraps, the leftovers, the carcase of the animal that is to burned outside the camp with the dung.

"But the fat, and the kidneys, and the caul above the liver of the sin offering, he burnt upon the altar; as the LORD commanded Moses" (Leviticus 9:10). Isn't it interesting to consider the parts of the animal that God desired to be burned upon the altar of sacrifice? The parts that we would want no part of, the parts that we would cut off and throw away, what we would most likely consider undesirable--these are the very parts that Yahweh commands Moses and Aaron to be offered unto Him. But what of the part of the animal that we would say must be saved for its innumerable uses, the very hide, the skin, the "leather"? Burn it.

How could God command for one of the most valuable parts of the animal sacrifice to be burned, and not only burned, but set aflame with the most useless part of the animal--the dung? What the Lord of Glory values is not what man values, nor what the church values. We so readily look on the outward appearance of a church, a ministry, a man's life, and think that it all appears so worthy of praise in the sight of God. The church has a prayer ministry, the pastor maintains a regular devotional time every day, the congregation is committed to a whole host of outreach ministries. Even the youth appear "on fire" for God. But where does it all lead if not to the footstool of the Almighty, where He stretches out His holy rod and reveals the works for what they truly are?

Why is it that we think we can work hard enough on our own terms in a manner that is acceptable unto God, even to the point of taking the very duties which are given us of Him and manipulate them in such a way that they become utterly unrecognizable? We exchange obedience to the words of God for adherence to precepts of men. The Pharisees did the same. They read and knew the Law better than any group of people on the face of the earth. They created rule upon rule for men to follow if they were going to walk in accordance with the commandments given by God to Moses. Precept was upon precept, line was upon line. This religious elite would stop at nothing to obey the words of God in outward show. Then came God Incarnate. A mere helpless Babe, robed in flesh and bone, very Man born of very woman of seemingly insignificant stock. But somewhere down the line, in the distant past of this woman's heritage the blood of kings issued through the veins of her forebears; and not the blood of just any king of this unique nation of Israel, the exemplar of kingship under Yahweh's rule--David, the man after God's own heart. "The LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the LORD hath commanded him [to be] captain over his people..." (1Samuel 13:14).

David, the one unto whom the promise was given, "I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son" (2Samuel 7:12-14). David, the man whose sin with Bathsheba resulted in one of the most heart-wrenching, honest, and self-effacing cries for mercy in the whole of Scripture found in Psalm 51. It is in this Psalm that David pleads with the Lord of heaven and earth on such a level as to reveal himself as a mere man, stripped of all pretence, unrobed of all kingly garb, confessing the most heinous of acts against a Holy God. "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned..." All others have been removed from the sight of David, there is no more any other competing for attention, and all culpability has been laid at the feet of the chosen king of Israel, and by his own admission no less.

Now this earthly king lies prostrate before the Heavenly King Who chose him and utters these unforgettable words, "For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give [it]: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God [are] a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (Psalm 51:16-17). How can this man so learned in the Scriptures and laws of God speak such a thing? Does he not know the laws concerning burnt sacrifices and sin offerings? Could he not open the scrolls that adjured the proper offering to atone for his sin? Indeed, he did. But that was not what God was seeking in David, and it was not what He was seeking in Israel even in the giving of the commandments. "Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you" (Jeremiah 7:21-23). He was after something of an inner kind, originating from heaven itself, that eventuated in the offering of one's life down to the scruple, a life that would walk in perfect obedience to the Voice of God Who speaks. And this kind of life can only be described in terms of a sacrifice, because it will cost everything natural and carnal in the man who lives under the sentence of death. It is a sacrifice predicated upon the quintessence of sacrifice--that of a Lamb without spot or blemish.

This true sacrifice of God is revealed in a most striking passage in the book of Hebrews: "For the law having a shadow of good things to come, [and] not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect...For [it is] not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins...Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me..."(Hebrews 10:1-5).

"A body hast Thou prepared Me." This is the statement of none other than that now fully grown Babe, bearded and rugged, dirt clinging to His sandals, sweat running down His dusty brow, unimpressive in appearance, a Root out of dry ground. But this Root bore a Majesty and Glory that was witnessed unto by every word and every deed. Grace mingled with fire issued from His lips in every syllable on His holy tongue. What is the body prepared of which He speaks? The flesh and bone body of a now thirty-something Jewish Carpenter, foreordained of God the Almighty in eternity past to be the offering by which atonement would be made for the sins of the world. Hidden beneath the surface of this Son of Man lie a Lamb without spot or blemish, slaughtered before earth's foundations were laid or ever Adam breathed one breath in God's good creation.

There was an offering that was foreshadowed in every law given, in every sacrifice set in order by the God of Israel. Jesus Christ the Righteous "is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for [the sins of] the whole world" (1John 2:2). By Him we have access through one Spirit to God the Father by that new and living way prepared for us through the veil of His flesh (see Hebrews 10:20). For what then did God the Everlasting LORD clothe Himself with human flesh in order to bear the sins of all mankind upon Himself? For what did the Son of Glory take upon Himself the unmitigated wrath of God and become sin for us? What was it that He was seeking? What was His reward?

A sacrifice indeed. "And Aaron shall make an atonement upon the horns of it once in a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonements: once in the year shall he make atonement upon it throughout your generations: it [is] most holy unto the LORD" (Exodus 30:10). Aaron, the high priest, entered into the holy of holies once a year to present before God the blood of atonement, placed upon the mercy seat, whereby the sins of the nation would be purged (see Leviticus 16). Prior to the sacrifice given for the people, Aaron had to present an offering for himself. Before the sins of the people could be dealt with by way of the hands of the high priest, the hands of the high priest had to be cleansed. "And Aaron shall bring the bullock of the sin offering, which [is] for himself, and shall make an atonement for himself, and for his house..." (Leviticus 16:11). No man can be a means of reconciliation between men and God until that man has himself been reconciled through the blood of the Final Sin Offering, "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). There must be an at-one-ment of relationship between that man or woman and God in order for them to operate as an authentic ambassador for Christ. In this oneness with Jesus Christ we partake of the eternal fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a fellowship characterized by the holy love and light of Christ displayed amongst even the most drastically dull of duties on earth.

Our holy High Priest entered the holiest of all, presenting Himself to God and His Father, the only unblemished Man to ever walk the face of the earth. The blood of Jesus Christ was the only means by which any man would ever enter into the Presence of Almighty God. His blood is the blood of the sin offering offered once for all, as says the Holy Spirit, "But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands...Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption [for us]. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (Hebrews 9:11-14). So we draw near to God, having been redeemed by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ upon a cross fashioned by men made in His image, with wood created by God's own hands. It is by this offering that we are sanctified, set apart unto God's foreordained use and the outworking of His will in us--body, soul, and spirit. And yet the question is begged: does mere mental comprehension of the doctrine of redemption make us the sacrifice God is seeking? Not by any means.

We must not stop here, we must not stand afar off beholding the cross on which the Living Christ died, and walk away happy and blessed for the salvation that He has purchased. The only reason salvation is free for us is because it cost God everything. Not until we approach that Cross whereupon God hung and offer our hands to be pierced through with His, present our feet to be nailed with His, and so enter into that death once and for all with Him, will we ever know what it is to be the sacrifice that God has been seeking from the ancient days of eternity. Paul says of himself, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). This is not a declaration applied by default to all his readers simply by virtue of themselves espousing proper credal statements. Paul speaks these words as a deep and definite experience he himself has passed through--Paul has died, and he no longer lives. "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Galatians 6:14). Paul the apostle has breathed his last breath on earth as his own possession, he is now a man wholey possessed by God. He is dead; and yet he lives. Unto what end does Paul now live? As a living sacrifice perpetually offered unto God every moment of every day; waking or sleeping his life is not his own. "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (1Corinthians 6:19-20).

"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us...Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." (2Corinthians 4:7-11). Day by day the apostle Paul and those who trod the earth with him bore in themselves the perpetual experience of Jesus Christ's death, a death that was wholly surrendered unto in every act of apostolic obedience on the part of these men. They knew nothing by themselves, and were content to be held to the highest standard of God's righteous judgments, knowing full well that their very thoughts and motives were seen under the Righteous Judge's watchful eye. Distress, persecution, nakedness, peril, rejection, hatred, cursing--none of these opposing forces could sway this blood-bought slave of Heaven's Holy Lamb. Consequently, the eternal decrees of God were brought to bear upon every man and woman with whom Paul came in contact, as the immortal life and Presence of the Son of God were manifest in His apostle's mortal flesh.

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, [which is] your reasonable service" (Romans 12:1). So the Holy Spirit commands through this dead man walking, in whom the Living Christ has taken His residence, that all who are called saints present themselves as living sacrifices to God. Oswald Chambers summarizes this supreme exhortation, "Give up your right to yourself to God." The Almighty will not take your right to yourself from you, it must be given freely without condition. As a Christian, the only right a blood-bought man or woman has is the right to give up their rights completely over to God. Where does this surrender of one's rights lead? What is the end of this relinquishing of what we so treasure and count so dear, not only as human beings, but also as Americans who place such value on personal rights? It appears that love for oneself must yield to One greater than itself in a sovereign preference for that Greater One that unites mortal man to his Immortal Maker.

In response to a scribe's question about the first and greatest commandment, Jesus answers with an interesting Scripture as a prelude: "The first of all the commandments [is], Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord" (Mark 12:29). Having enunciated the pronouncement of Yahweh found in Deuteronomy 6, only then does the Son of God proceed with what immediately follows, "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this [is] the first commandment" (Mark 12:30). You see, if we miss the knowledge of God as He in fact is, we cannot by any means fulfill the commandment to love Him. God is one and beside Him there is no other god. The scribe responds with his concurrence of Christ's decisive declaration of the great commandment by saying this, "Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love [his] neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices" (Mark 12:32-33). More than whole burnt offerings and sacrifices? This man learned in the Scriptures breathed by God's own mouth has the audacity to make such a claim? How does Jesus respond to this boldness? "And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God" (Mark 12:34). God's whole purpose in giving the law and speaking through the prophets was to one end, namely, that men and women made in His image would love Him above all else, which would inevitably evince itself in love for neighbor and even enemy. Not only is this love for God and neighbor the aim of the law, it is also the motivation and outworking of any true sacrifice acceptable to God. However, the animal sacrifices prescribed by the Holy Spirit through Moses also prophesy in type One Who would come as the Ultimate Sacrifice by Whom mankind would be reconciled to God, initiating us into an at-one-ment with Him whereby and wherein we might truly love Him. But to end here will leave us perilously ignorant of what Jesus Christ is after in this man--there is a revelation that beckons, without whose deep and unimpeded apprehension we will stray from any true knowledge of God as God.

Upon commending the scribe for his grasp of the word of God, the Lord asks a probing question, one which tests how well His hearers really understand what He is saying. "How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David? For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool. David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he [then] his son?" (Mark 12:35-37). Hidden within this ostensibly simple question regarding the prophetic Psalm 110, and its declaration of the Christ as David's Lord, is a revelation of a mystery that has been hidden for generations concerning the nature of God as one Lord. If the scribes in Jesus' hearing can receive it, they will realize that it is very God Who now stands before His own creation and searches their hearts with a piercing insight that proves how well they truly understand what He is saying. This is why the man unto whom Jesus responds regarding the issue of God's great commandment is not yet permitted conclusive entry into His kingdom. What this scribe must comprehend is that the very God Whom he is commanded to love is revealed in the Person under Whose tutelage he now finds himself. The prophesied Priest and Lord from this psalm of David now calls all who hear to find in Himself the One they are to love and worship, for within this Son of David dwells all the fulness of the Godhead in bodily form (Colossians 1:19, 2:9). No wonder John is so adamant, "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that [spirit] of antichrist..." (1John 4:2-3). Without this revelatory knowledge of God as God Incarnate in Jesus Christ love for Him is impossible, annulling any offering presented to God and rendering any such sacrifice abomination to the Lord (Proverbs 15:8). Abandoning ourselves in love to Jesus Christ as Lord and God is the only way it can be said of us, "Thy people [shall be] willing ( literally a "freewill offering" ) in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth" (Psalm 110:3). For "in this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him...We love him, because he first loved us" (1John 4:9). So the Holy Spirit decrees, "whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: [(but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also]" (1John 2:23).

How abundant are the ways we may receive or reject the Son, thereby revealing ourselves for what we are in essence, a holy offering of sacrifice unto God, or the stenchful flesh that is to be burnt outside the camp along with the dung! Within the church in this very hour men and women are giving themselves over to demonic uncleanness, even under the auspices of revival. Unholy laughter, demonic jerkings, scandalous and carnal cravings for a false glory--all exposing the wandering whorish heart of a harlot church who has turned her back on her Heavenly Bridegroom. We are a church given wholly over to sensuality of the basest and most immoral kind. We are a people ruled by our senses, content to follow after any visible sign regardless of its source as long as it is spiritual in nature. Tragically, however, spiritual experience is the last and greatest stronghold of deception (see 2Thessalonians 2:3-12). If we are given over to sundry encounters of a spiritual sort no matter the dubious nature of its fruit or the bitter spring from which it flows, we will never know God in truth. For to love God is to love the truth, and a man's love for God is in direct proportion to his love for the truth. "I am the Truth," says Jesus. Art Katz has rightly stated, "if the enemy can succeed in bringing the church to viewing benefit as the determinant by which something is judged to be of God, we may well have been brought to the very ground of deception itself." Is it any wonder such spiritual manifestations that have their origins in hell oft-times work themselves out in the very bodies of men, even with an ostensibly beneficial outcome?

Satan has always appealed to men after the manner of man, exalting man's view of himself. Calling men to behold themselves as the end of all being and final authority, the devil invites the human soul to partake of that which is forbidden. His temptations almost invariably call men's attention to that which he can see, taste, hear, touch, or smell; even feel in a spiritual way; all the while that wilely serpent casts doubt on the very commandments of God. "And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?...And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, and that it [was] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make [one] wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat" (Genesis 3:1-6, emphasis added). The church's embrace of such connivings and seductions has proven her to be the sinfully sensual body that she has become. We have failed to be a priestly people who separate between the holy and the profane. Consequently, God will sovereignly and justly hand over to a lie those who refuse to heed the voice of the Spirit of truth when He speaks. A prayer offered in Jesus' name, a word preached for the salvation of the lost, a prophetic utterance over an apostate people, even a verifiable healing performed in the broken body of a child--none of these wonderful demonstrations authenticate a man or woman by whom such works are performed as a genuine sacrifice unto God. This fact testifies to the verity of our Lord's words that many are called, but few are chosen. Until mercy and truth have met together, until righteousnes and peace have kissed within the soul of a man or woman, no matter the works wrought, he or she will never be a living sacrifice acceptable in the sight of God (Psalm 85:10).

What we do with our bodies matters tremendously to God, and that includes the very outworkings of every spiritual influence we yield ourselves unto, whether holy or profane. Why is it such an abomination for a man to claim that he was born in the wrong body and ought to be a woman? How could a woman say that she should possess male genitalia, ingest male hormones, and live her life on the outward as a man? Why are we within the church beginning to see the gradual surrender of ourselves to homosexual desires, trading the natural for the unnatural, identifying ourselves along the lines of our sexuality rather than our identity in God? A homosexual bishop is an oxymoron just as much as an idolatrous priest and a pedophilic pastor. Even the church of the living God has exchanged the truth for a lie. Yet we have not considered our ways and so have not known that our perversion and estrangement from God begins in one place, within the heart, and ineluctibly works itself out in the most elementary place--the human body. Is it any wonder the church is counted as the body of Christ? For the Lord Jesus is our holy Head moving and directing us by His sovereign decrees. However, estranged from the Head, we have lost our way and fallen in the darkened streets along with the truth we were commanded to carry to a world lying in falsehood and deceit. The flesh and blood human body is a marvellous work of God's creation, made to be a holy habitation of God's Eternal Spirit, but we have presently given our bodies in condescension as temples abused and offered for the inhospitable horrors of sin. Yet God says, "Surely I will require your lifeblood" (Genesis 9:5). Jesus Christ has set out to do what no one else could ever do, "He shall build me an house, and I will stablish his throne for ever" (1Chronicles 17:12). We the church are that temple that the Son is building unto the Father, down to the flesh and bone body of each individual member. This is why the very blood that flows through our veins will witness either for us or against us on that final day, testifying of its fruitfulness as a pleasing sacrifice unto Almighty God or as a soiled and impugnable stain on an unregenerate soul.

Thus it is said, "the life of the flesh [is] in the blood..." (Leviticus 17:11). We have come back full circle to the consideration of the parts offered in the offering unto God. The life is in the blood. The blood of the sacrifice belongs to God. We are to present ourselves as "a living sacrifice," and not only ourselves as spiritual men and women. God requires the most rudimentary thing, the flesh and blood body wherein we walk amidst the everyday experiences of life. Without the corporeal expression of our irrevocable abandonment to God, we speak mere pleasantries that are altogether void of real sacrifice. For it is that body that is sanctified by God's Glory as a temple for the Holy Spirit. It is that body that the Everlasting Triune God has chosen as His holy habitation (see 1Corinthians 6:19, John 14:23). The simple fact that we go on living each day for our own desires, doing our own things, speaking our own words is evidence enough that we know nothing of the cost of being an authentic sacrifice unto God. "A son honoureth [his] father, and a servant his master: if then I [be] a father, where [is] mine honour? and if I [be] a master, where [is] my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?...if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, [is it] not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, [is it] not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the LORD of hosts" (Malachi 1:6-8). We have been blind and lame and sick and blemished, and we somehow think that in offering ourselves to God in our current state we shall be accepted. Our spots, our wrinkles, and our fleshly excuses for such expose us as men and women unwilling to pay the price to offer ourselves as an acceptable offering to God. We know very little what it costs to be the offering that satisfies the heart of God because we are patently ignorant of the inestimable cost for Jesus Christ to offer Himself to God (see Mark 15:34). It is a strangely unremarkable thing to be willing to go to the death for your faith in God; it is much more costly and much rather the requirement of God that we be a living sacrifice, offered moment by moment upon the altar of His sacrifice without any consideration for the price paid, simply because He is worthy. Will you relinquish everything dear to yourself, even your own notions of what it means to serve God that you might offer yourself a sacrifice that is pleasing to Him?

The life is in the blood. Carried through the veins of the perpetual offering of the saints of God runs the continual reminder of the price that God Himself paid in redeeming unto Himself a pure and spotless bride. It was not merely the blood of a self-appointed messianic man born as any other man. It was the priceless blood of the virgin-born Man Who is the selfsame God Who requires the sacrifice, it was the sinless blood of the unsullied and unspotted Son Who was declared by the Father to be both Lord and Messiah (see Acts 2:36). God shall possess the reward of His Son's suffering, an eternal sacrifice offered endlessly by love-slaves devoted to His Glory alone. Jesus Christ, the Eternal I Am, offered Himself as the ultimate sacrifice for sin without spot to the Father. In loving and abandoned response each member of His church is to offer itself body, soul, and spirit to God a living sacrifice, being transformed by the renewing of our minds, in order that we might rightly discern the will of God. The question stands: we are most certainly a sacrifice, but unto whose will and by whose way? For even the people of Israel in the heat and fervor of rebellion offered a sacrifice, but it was a sacrifice presented to a god of their own making (see Exodus 32). Yet Moses, with the groaning cry of a heart jealously beating for God's Glory and God's Presence above all else, pleaded with Yahweh, "shew me now thy way, that I may know thee..." (Exodus 33:13). For this is what shall matter in the final estimation: "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21, emphasis added). It is the way and will of the Holy One unto Whom we must give account that command obedience and mercifully enable it. It is this same dominating will of which the Son spoke in His days on earth, "Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God;" "For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me" (Hebrews 10:7, John 6:38). In like manner, the Father's will becomes our very delight, the unspeakable joy of His disciples, as we live and move and breathe under the banner of His Lordship, offering ourselves a sacrifice indeed to the delight of the God of Israel.

Footsteps Into Silence

2007-11-27T00:14:00.000-08:00

I hear something coming.
How can it be?
I sit here in silence;
I’ve been here in silence
For so long that sound,
Any sound seems strange,
So very foreign, almost frightening.
But it is a fear that is welcome.
Because with that sound
Comes something into my nothing.
I welcome thee, thou holy interruption,
upsetting this long and troubling silence;
But only if that sound comes
From One I need to hear, to see--
The One Who bled for me.
This sanctified silence itself bids me come
To the Feet of an Holy One,
Who stirs the clouds as dust at His coming.
Broken, I bow broken with no words,
Only a groan deep within.
It is faint, but there it is again—
That sound, I hear it approaching.
Faint though it be,
I recognize the disturbance of this quiet—
Footsteps, yes, that is the Sound that I hear!
Could it be?
Dare I dream such a dream?
But is it a dream that I dream?
Or is it the answer to that dream I have dreamed?
With the footsteps comes One
I love with deepest depths
And broadest breadths of all I am.
If these are Those Feet,
Please approach nearer, come closer.
Draw nigh more quickly.
Take me to the Feet that create this sound—
Footsteps, yes, that is it—
They are footsteps that I hear!
My heart is pounding,
This solemn sound resounding.
They thunder upon the earth, these Feet;
Yet they glide as if borne by the wind.
Creation quakes at their coming;
My spirit breaks before the One
To Whom these Footsteps belong,
As an offering poured out like oil
To anoint such Holy Feet.
Oh, I weep, I weep.
Through clouds, amidst darkness, in blinding flames
I see Feet. Oh, Holy Feet, draw me.
My Savior, my God, draw me unto Thee.
For in Thee I find my soul’s deepest dream;
In Thee I find the answer to my cry—
Nail-pierced Feet, before You I crumble.
For these Feet carry my Love, my Life, my Lord;
All I live for, all I die for—
Jesus Christ, ‘tis Thee, ‘tis Thee!

The Gloriously Dreadful Day

2007-09-05T00:59:00.000-07:00

Thus says the Lord Almighty unto His church in America, Woe, woe unto you, oh My church. For you have wrought lewdness in the sight of many and have uncovered your nakedness before the nations. You have paraded your shame down the streets in pride and have cast off all restraint. Therefore, this is what I say to you, oh My church, Woe, woe unto you who seek the day of the Lord, for I the Lord Jesus Christ declare unto you that My day shall be to the shameful church a day of darkness and not light, a day of sorrow and not delight.

It is coming, the day is coming. It draws near, My great and dreadful day draws near. Who will hear? Who will hear? For I the Lord Almighty have determined a day, the likes of which you have not seen. In that day will I bring swift judgment upon all the ungodly in My church. The day is coming in which I will judge the heathen and the nations shall tremble at My Presence. But what will you do in that hour, My faithless Bride?

Will you hide yourself because of your nakedness that you have revealed before the world? Who has told you that you are unclothed? Will you not know? Will you not know? For I am coming for you, My Bride. Do not hide. Do not cover yourself with the world's apparel. But be clothed in My righteousness; be arrayed in My glorious attire.

You have removed from yourself My crown which I had placed upon your head, even the honor which I had bestowed upon you by My honor. In shamefulness, in iniquity, in covetousness have you taken from your head the honor that I had crowned you with to lay My honor at the feet of your idols. But as surely as I live, says the Lord Jesus Christ, I will not share My glory with another, neither will I give My honor to any other. You have counted yourself unworthy of My Glory; therefore shall My Presence depart from you in such a way as to cause you to know that I have indeed departed from you. You will seek to stir yourself as in days past and you will find that your strength has failed, your power has ceased with the removal of My Spirit from your midst.

Surely your turning of things upside down shall be known when I overturn all things before you. In that day will I command you to remove the crown, to lay down in dust, to array yourself in ashes. Be clothed, be clothed! With what will you clothe yourself, My church? For naked you came forth from the womb, and naked shall you return to the dust from which you were formed when I withdraw My breath from you. But I urge you, repent, and hold fast that which I have given to you; or else I will take that crown which belonged to you in patience and give it to another who is worthy, one who will declare My renown among the nations.

Can a man live when the breath of God is taken from his nostrils? Can a king rule without a crown? Can a bride be whole without her bridegroom? Can the church be the body of Christ without the Head? There is no hope to the church that hears and rejects My words, pronounces the King of kings, only a sure looking forward to of darkness, and gloominess, and doom.

You have surrounded yourself with prophets of the deceit of their own hearts, men who utter lies in My name, women who speak a vision of their own hearts. You hear what you want to hear, and compass yourself about with mouths uttering falsehood, meager men feasting on the flesh of My people, offering words of flattery for an offering of love. But you have forgotten that I hear what is spoken in My name, and I will bring swift retribution upon all who deceive My people with their lies, causing My people to stumble by their lightness. No lie will stand in My presence, declares the God of truth, and all falsehood will fall, failing in fulfillment, revealing those who have reviled Me with their vain revelations; and the sin of your mouths shall be your undoing. This I assure you, My church, every error and unclean word will be tried by My words, when the fire of My mouth passes upon it, and no false thing will remain, declares the Holy One of Israel.

Lift your eyes. Lift your eyes. That great and glorious day draws nigh. And I the Lord God Almighty, the God of Israel, will have a Bride. I will love her and cover her. I will redeem her from the slavery into which she has sold herself. And I will be her Husband and she will be My wife.

Howbeit, know for certain that terrible terror shall befall America, and My church will I hold to account for her part in the demise of this nation's place. Should you fear? Should you tremble? Would you fall once again before your Great King? For it is I Am, the LORD, mighty to save, and of infinite power, Who speaks to you, My church, in this late and desperate hour.

You have sought the world's approval and appealed to men after the manner of man. But you do not know that My Presence has departed from you, causing you great fear and shame and failure. Turn from your wicked ways, oh My church. Return and seek My face. Cast off your filthy rags that cannot conceal your sin. Do you know how long it has been since you last saw My Glory? For I am coming, declares the Lord Jesus Christ.

The day of your visitation is at hand, oh America. The day of your judgment stands, oh church of America, and I the LORD of hosts will send from above and gather My holy hosts for the day of My visitation.

I have shown you My ways and you have cast them away to walk in the ways of man. But I am jealous, declares the LORD, I am jealous for My holy name's sake. Therefore, have I declared that I will sanctify Myself in you in spite of you. Wherefore, return, repent, come again to My high and holy throne and I will receive you as My own, declares the jealous God.

Know also that assuredly Israel shall know her day, even My day upon her. For there is a time coming in which My nation of priests estranged and servants loosed from Me will encounter trouble on all sides. Destruction is determined upon the people of My choosing, a time of travail and the pains of birth, a time of trouble and terrible trembling. It is the time of Jacob's trouble that shall not be as any other time. For there has been no day like it, nor shall there ever be again. Out of this tremendous trouble shall Israel be saved and Jacob shall dwell safely within her borders of peace. But her security will not be purchased by political wrangling, nor by the blood of soldiers shed. Her safety shall not be bought with peace accords enacted within the halls of kings and presidents. For the world will rage against My people, Israel, and all nations will trouble themselves with her. She will wander among the nations, and find refuge only in Me. Having sought a place of rest in the world, she will find none. And Jersusalem will again be the place of My throne, a heavenly city adorned as a bride for her Bridegroom. I will dwell amongst My people, all of My sons and all of My daughters upon whom My Name is called, and I will be their God and they shall be My people. My outcasts will find hope in Me alone, and nowhere else will she find a home, and I will be the glory in the midst of her, and she shall be saved by Him Whose Name is the LORD our Righteousness. Thus shall be the day of My visitation upon Israel, thus shall be the final exodus, thus shall be the day of the revelation of My Son from heaven. Look up! Look up! For your redemption draws nigh. Come near! Come near! For I call to all who hear, and My salvation I bring near, announces the Lord God of Israel.

That I May Serve

2007-04-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

The sin of Judah [is] written with a pen of iron, [and] with the point of a diamond: [it is] graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars; Whilst their children remember their altars and their groves by the green trees upon the high hills. ~Jeremiah 17:1-2

Where is the sanctuary? Where is the place of rest for our souls in the United States of America? Where do we turn when we have no one else to turn to? My heart breaks this night as I consider the terror and tragedy that transpired on the Virginia Tech campus on the morning of April 16, 2007. As in many like circumstances the common question has been presented, with no answer from the world: WHY? There is a resounding silence from the academics, from the skeptics, and from the self-serving politicians and self-serving spiritual guides. Why is an appropriate question, but do we truly want to know the answer? I believe without doubt that God awaits us in the unspeakable glory of His throneroom to instruct us and teach us and speak to our hearts concerning why such a slaughter of life was allowed to take place on a college campus in America yesterday.

I would so desire to offer a word of encouragement in this hour to a nation that reels from the terror of this day. But I fear that no encouragement can be offered that does not come with a terrifying warning to a trembling nation. You see, Jeremiah received a word from Yahweh concerning the nation of Israel in his day that dealt with the spiritual health of the land. Israel was under the curse of God for the reasons delineated in the verses above, and this curse would result in the most aweful of desolations the nation had endured to that day, judgement of a supreme kind from the Supreme God of all creation.

The verse that strikes me as I read these two verses is the one calling attention to the children who themselves had remembered their altars and their groves. The word for groves is actually the word "asherah," a Babylonian-Canaanite deity referred to elsewhere in Jeremiah as the queen of heaven. It is believed that she was a deity of fortune and happiness. At times in worship to this false god the children themselves took part in the offerings presented. "The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead [their] dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger" (Jeremiah 7:18).

The fathers and the mothers had forsaken Yahweh, the God of Israel, and given themselves over to work wickedness in the sight of the LORD. However, it did not stop at the parents but continued as a practice carried out by their progeny. "ENOUGH!" exclaims God through the prophet. "Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD: [do they] not [provoke] themselves to the confusion of their own faces? Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched" (Jeremiah 7:19-20).

The day of judgement had come upon a disobedient and gainsaying people who refused to walk in the ways of God, provoking Him day and night to His face with their obstinacy. The ways of the fathers had been passed onto the children and the children themselves would reap the fruit of what their parents had been sowing and taught them to sow, a seed of vileness and evil and perversion that would spring forth in ultimate destruction upon the nation of God's chosen.

In the state of Virginia the deciding battle of the Revolutionary War was fought at Yorktown. It was there, on Viriginian soil, that God granted victory to the fledgling rabble of British descent, who had set out to seek a land wherein they might worship and work under authentic freedoms granted them by their Creator. Thus, the United States of America was thereafter born. Virginia has been called the "Mother of States" because portions of the land of the original colony was divided into parts of at least five different states. The state is also called the "Mother of Presidents" because she is the birthplace of eight of the presidents of the United States, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Virginia Tech contains the largest full-time student population in Virginia, a population comprised of students from across the United States and from elsewhere in the world. Its motto is Ut Prosim, or in English, THAT I MAY SERVE. The facilities of a small Methodist school were purchased and became the foundation of what is now known as Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Such is the location of the worst mass murder of its kind in the history of the United States of America. I assure you, these facts are no mere coincidence.

On Monday, April 16, 2007, thirty-three people, including the murderer himself, were killed on this Virginian college campus. The children are suffering for the sins of their fathers, and not only for the sins of their fathers, but for partaking of the very same sins themselves, estranging themselves from the Living God, seeking in large part to worship before the altar of fortune and happiness. The unalienable rights perceived to be given unto all mankind by God were "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." But what this nation has forgotten was that outside of the God Who grants us these certain unalienable rights can never be found true life, nor true liberty, nor a true pursuit of happiness.

President George W. Bush said concerning the massacre at Virginia Tech, "Schools should be places of safety, sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom in every American community." We have neglected and outright rejected a most holy testimony of the saints of God throughout all generations: "A glorious high throne from the beginning [is] the place of our sanctuary. O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, [and] they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters" (Jeremiah 17:12-13). I cry out with Jeremiah, "Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou [art] my praise" (Jeremiah 17:14). What will it take for this healing to take place? It must begin with the church of the Living God. "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land" (2Chronicles 7:14). Not until we return to the glorious high Throne of God Almighty in repentance and prayer will we ever know true sanctuary in our schools, in our homes, or most notably in our churches.

We have deceived our children into thinking that our ways are the true ways of life, as we struggle morning, noon, and night with feelings of inadequacy, illegitimacy, and helplessness. We murder children while they are yet in their mothers' wombs in the name of a woman's right to choose, denying God the right to the glory He deserves in the child He was knitting together according to His eternal decrees. But when a man marches onto a campus with a gun in his hand and performs the same act in perfect accord with the moral standards he has been taught to uphold, we fail to see the hypocrisy. We teach children they are merely animals derived from primates of generations past, but when they act like animals we scorn them for maintaining consistency to the principles they have been taught in America's classrooms.

We murder men by hatred within our hearts. We export sexual immorality across the globe to pad our pockets so that we might live out the American dream safely in our own borders granted us by the Holy One Who inhabits eternity. We have become a sanctuary of sin for anyone who wants to live any sort of unrestrained lifestyle he or she so chooses, without regard for the consequences. We have embraced idolatry across the nation, calling all faiths equal and good and right, all the while despising the Name of Jesus Christ, Who is the only Way, the only Truth, and the only Life. In fact, we turn our noses up in disgust and pride before any man who would dare to suggest that there is only one true Way to God. We have that right in America, indeed we do; but the rights we claim for ourselves to give ourselves over to uncleanness of indescribable kinds will also be our ruin if we do not repent as a nation.

For too long we have mocked God, despising and mistreating His messengers, who cry out day and night to turn us from death. For too long have we called holiness sin, and sin holiness, forming our own notions of righteousness, establishing our own moral codes in direct defiance of God. For too long we have scoffed at the warnings of wrath to come, quipping, "Let him make speed, [and] hasten his work, that we may see [it]: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know [it]!" (Isaiah 5:19). But the Holy Spirit declares unto you, "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" (Galatians 6:7). "Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope...Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:18-20).

The altars of sacrifice before which we worship will be sufficient testimony to condemn us on the day of judgment, not to acquit us before a holy and righteous and jealous God. For our sins have been graven with a diamond point upon our very hearts and upon the altars of our idolatry, exposing that which we thought was concealed for no one to ever behold. Howbeit, God most assuredly sees all of our deeds and all of our thoughts. "Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things [are] naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Hebrews 4:13). Therefore, we ought the more quickly to run to the mercy seat of our Great High Priest, Jesus Christ, and receive the grace He so freely offers at the exalted throne of His Glory. Will we be the living sacrifice He seeks, or will we prove ourselves the children of wrath?

"The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin" (Deuteronomy 24:16). Indeed, the Word of God stands forever, and He testifies that the man shall die for his own sin. But what will we do when the children carry on in worse measure the sins of their fathers, magnifying themselves in the iniquities taught them by their parents? Be assured of this: there is no remedy for sin where there is no repentance. For Yahweh has declared in all verity, "I am the LORD, 'the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear [the guilty]; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth [generation]'" (Exodus 34:6-7). How could we possibly have any other response to these eternal words than that of Moses who "made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped," forsaking all we have and all we are to belong specially and uniquely unto the Living God of all creation as His inheritance(Exodus 34:8)?

For the church of Jesus Christ, all rights have been relinquished unto God for His good pleasure, that He might take us where He wills, bless us as He wills, break us as He wills, and do altogether as He so pleases with our very lives. We are to be a peculiar people, a special and unique treasure unto God for His own purposes and glory. The church in America has altogether abandoned this concept of being a freewill offering unto God. She has forsaken any semblence of being the purchased possession of the Almighty, which He bought with His own blood. And our children this day are reaping the fruit of the seeds of iniquity and idolatry that we have sown in years past. We have sought God for nothing more than to obtain life abundant (which we translate as self-indulgence), liberty from any constraints on our lives (including freedom from any responsibility to honor God with our bodies or our spirits), and to pursue happiness (which we interpret to mean getting what we want when we want it from a god made in our own image who exists to bless us according to our own selfish ambitions and motives).

America, be warned! This deadly rampage of one man murdering your children as they sat in class learning the wisdom of the world's system is a supreme mercy meted out by the God of heaven and earth, Who is also the God of history, and the God of the nations. You have been the signpost for perversion across the world, pointing the way to sin of an incomprehensible kind. Murder, fornication, adultery, self-indulgence, idolatry--these shall be your end if you do not repent. Hear the voice of God calling out to you to turn from your wicked ways and return to the Creator and Former of this nation, Who established the United States of America as a country through which He might show His glory. How will we be seen as a nation in the years to come? Will we be like Pharaoh, of whom God spoke, saying, "Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth" (Romans 9:17)? Will God do with this nation as He did with Egypt in executing His judgment upon the entire country in order to redeem a people unto Himself? "Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will [have mercy], and whom he will he hardeneth" (Romans 9:18).

Church of Jesus Christ in America, be warned! "For the time [is come] that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if [it] first [begin] at us, what shall the end [be] of them that obey not the gospel of God?" (1Peter 4:17). God will not pass over the sin of an obstinate and disobedient people who name His Name but reject Him day by day in their very deeds and thoughts and the most intimate intentions of their hearts. For "the LORD said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man" (Genesis 6:3). The sons of God have joined themselves to work all kinds of wickedness with the daughters of men once again in this generation, and God will not overlook our transgressions if we refuse to repent when He calls to us in mercy. "And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all." (Luke 17:26-27). Our children have seen us bow down to the altars of idolatry and themselves have partaken of our iniquities, following an unholy host of fathers and mothers down a devilish path of destruction.

Oh, that God would send His word once again to this nation and her church, that He would "turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers," that we as the church would walk in the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus before a nation ready to perish, drowning in a sea of her own corruption (Malachi 4:6, Romans 8:2). If we do not return to the God Who raised this nation up for His glory, the blessing we have embraced for so long will be stripped in a moment, and He will "come and smite the earth with a curse" (Malachi 4:6). "Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by [that] Man whom he hath ordained..." (Acts 17:31). America, hear. Church of Christ in America, give heed.

That I may serve. This I say to you, Church of Jesus Christ; this I say to you, United States of America and her inhabitants: "Choose you this day whom ye will serve" (Joshua 24:15). "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, [that] I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, [and] that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he [is] thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers..." (Deuteronomy 30:19-20).

Oh, LORD my God, have mercy on us! We have torn down Your altar and erected altars unto idols of our own imaginations. We have forgotten to pray, we seek not Your face, we wander down the broad way of death. How long, Oh Lord Jesus Christ, until You will look upon us with mercy? How long, Oh Lord, until You revive Your church once again? We confess our sins, we have given ourselves over to work iniquity, we have transgressed Your laws of love. We have committed fornication with the world, uncovering our nakedness before an unbelieving generation, bringing shame on Your Name. Oh God, pardon our sins, forgive our iniquity. Lord my God, see; Lord, hear; Lord Christ, forgive. For we turn unto You, Who alone can deliver us from this wicked and perverse generation, that we may find sanctuary at Your high and holy throne once again. FOR YOUR NAME'S SAKE, FATHER IN HEAVEN, FOR THE GLORY OF YOUR SON JESUS CHRIST, REMEMBER US, YOUR CHURCH, IN THIS MOST DESPERATE HOUR. "O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it [is] a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance" (Exodus 34:9).

Instruments of Judgment

2007-04-13T02:53:00.000-07:00

The perfect marriage of relentless, passionate, jealous love with holy, fathomless, intense anger--such is the judgment of Almighty God. This is an aspect of the Living God which many would like to ignore, forget, or outright deny. How could we, as wretched as we are, fully embrace this characteristic, this side, if you will, of the Lord we so long to see and know? But we will never truly know Him until this aspect of the nature of God is made a part of the fabric of our intimate relationship with Him. We cannot know God as Love if we do not know Him as Judge.

In the Cross of Jesus Christ the judgment of God is brought to the fore forevermore. In the words of Oswald Chambers, the Cross of Christ is the center of all of time and eternity, the answer to the enigmas of both. In His Cross the Son of God suffered the full magnitude of God's judgement for sin in His own fully human body, without in the least degree diminishing His divine nature. But why the crooked confines of a Roman cross? Why did God choose this instrument to be the means by which He would judge the sins of the world and provide redemption to the entire human race? How significant are the instruments of God's judgement in considering the execution of His wrath?

From the very inception of Israel as a nation belonging specially to God we see His judgments executed upon the nation of Egypt in order to redeem His people from the iron furnace of slavery. But why the specific ten plagues, such as water turned into blood, or frogs, or darkness? You see, if we look carefully at the manner in which God poured out these plagues, we will notice a very intriguing point. They were not merely capricious or fanciful ways of bringing a nation to its knees. No, the instruments of God's judgment on Egypt, in reference to the plagues, served an integral purpose in the deliverance God wrought for His people.

"For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I [am] the LORD" (Exodus 12:12). Look carefully and it becomes quite clear that a good number of the plagues are directed in some measure toward the false gods of Egypt. The first plague Yahweh brought upon Egypt was the turning of the nation's water into blood, as Aaron struck the water of the Nile River with the rod of God (Ex. 7:20). Egyptians had deified the Nile as the god Hopi, because of the the nation's dependence on its waters. The next plague involved God bringing upon the land masses of frogs, which animal the Egyptians had deified in the goddess Heqt, who was believed to assist women in childbirth. And the plague of darkness was directed unswervingly toward a chief Egyptian deity, the sun-god Ra. In each instance, the false gods of Egypt were exposed for the frauds that they were, and the God of Israel was revealed as the only true and Living God, Who was calling forth a people unto Himself.

Later in the history of Israel there rises a prophet by the name of Jonah. God called this man to prophesy the impending destruction of the pagan city Ninevah. However, Jonah knew the mercy of God and had no interest in Yahweh's sparing of this wicked city. Thus, when Jonah fled the call of God, the Lord first sent a storm to rage against him and his fellow travellers, then prepared a large fish to swallow him for three days and nights, in order to change the prophet's mind. When Jonah finally turns to God for salvation the fish spits him out and God reiterates His call to the stubborn man. Just a side note, but don't you find it humorous that God uses His servant's disobedience to become a sign for the burial and resurrection of Christ (Matthew 12:40)? Jonah acquiesces and preaches the judgement of God upon the city and its inhabitants, and they repent. The Lord forbears the pouring out of His wrath, and the pagan city of Ninevah narrowly escapes the judgment of the God of Israel.

Before the same century (700's B.C.) the northern tribes of Israel had already degenerated into a nation virtually indistinguishable from its idol-worshipping neighbors, save that they attempted to include Yahweh in their idolatry. The syncretistic worship of the God of Israel alongside false gods was insufferable. Day and night God sent His prophets calling for repentance if the nation wished to avert God's punishment for her sin. But the nation of Israel only fell further into idolatry, giving herself wholly over to the abominations of the nations around her. The instrument of judgment this time would be none other than the same pagan nation whose great city had repented at the preaching of God's prophet Jonah. Ninevah was a major city in Assyria, the nation that became a rod in Yahweh's hand to punish an unrepentant people who were literally hell-bent on wickedness and idolatry. In the final estimation ten of the twelve tribes of Israel were ruthlessly led into captivity at the hands of Assyrian soldiers because of the nation's obstinence and refusal to turn back to the Living God. Ninevah repented at the preaching of one foreign prophet serving the God of Israel. And this city's nation became an instrument of chastisement and wrath upon a people who persecuted, rejected, and murdered a multitude of Yahweh's messengers, whose only desire was that Israel would love and serve the true God exclusively.

The prophet Habakkuk learned this lesson when he presented his interrogative questions to the Almighty regarding the pervasive evil he witnessed in the land of Judah. God responded, "Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you. For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and and hasty nation..." (Habakkuk 1:5-6). God used a nation admittedly more wicked than Judah itself to judge His own people and lead them into captivity, far away from the promised land. The nation of Israel had become so vitiated in its idolatry and perversion of justice that Yahweh referred to her as Sodom's sister through His prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 16). As a result, He raised up a heathen nation to punish His purchased possession for her sin in perfect fulfillment of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 & 32.

Now onto more recent calamities--why did God use an enormous wave to sweep away over 200,000 people in the tsunami of December 26, 2004? There is no more perfect instrument than the very created waters of the Eternal Creator to demonstrate His sovereignty over the earth and its inhabitants. The nations stricken in this disaster are largely given over to the worship of idols, including Allah of Islam, Buddha of Buddhism, and the ubiquitous Brahman of Hinduism, three of the major world religions. Whereas these idols, along with all others, are a doctrine of vanities and the work of errors, "the LORD [is] the true God, he [is] the living God, and an everlasting king: at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide his indignation" (Jeremiah 10:1-16). This killer wave was an urgent warning to the people of these nations that "the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man Whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead" (Acts 17:30-31).

Consider also the purpose of God in using a religiously zealous group of Islamic terrorists to strike the heart of American prosperity and power at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A nation that has known to a great degree the marvellous blessing of God, including tremendous revivals poured out from heaven in the times of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, and the group at Azusa Street. Time and again the Lord Jesus Christ has called unto Himself multitudes in the short history of the United States of America. However, the church in this nation has prostituted herself with the filth of the world, sold herself to increase in the financial wealth of the country at the cost of forsaking God, and for all practical purposes become content with Christianity in name only. Consequently, America is suffering for the sins of the church. For this purpose God has discovered the shame of a dead church in the United States by judging the country as a whole with a group of people more devoted to a false god than the body of Christ is to the Living Lord. How many who flocked to churches immediately after 9/11 truly repented and yielded themselves to God? When they entered our churches did they meet with God? Could they? Tragically, so very few actually did. America has given herself over to unrighteousness of an indescribable kind, and for this she has faced the chastisement of the Living God. "Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the LORD...Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but My people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit" (Jeremiah 2:9-11).

When the Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself over to be beaten, scourged, and nailed to a cross He was fulfilling that which had been foreordained by the Eternal Godhead from the foundations of the world (1Peter 1:18-21, Revelation 13:8). His atoning death provided the only means of salvation from sin for humankind. The cross became the instrument of judgment in the hands of God the Father, and it pleased the LORD to bruise His own Son (Isaiah 53:10). "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree" (Galatians 3:13). In His death Christ took upon Himself the punishment for sin in its unmitigated fullness, ultimately expressed in His ostensible estrangement to some mysterious degree from the felt presence of the Father (Matthew 27:46). The overflowing wrath of God was brought to bear upon God as Man in order that man might be redeemed from sin. And it all took place upon a thoroughly commonplace Roman cross, which was nothing more than a tool of execution for various criminals of the day. While He could have opted for a more peaceful or less painful death in the primordial plan of redemption, Christ would have none of it. God's fury would therefore be experienced in ineffable torment by His Son in the place of those for whom He died. The Judge took upon Himself the necessary judgement for sin in order that He might be just and the Justifier of those who come unto God by Him (1Peter 3:18, Romans 3:26).

We cannot rightly interpret an event of judgment if we do not understand God's purpose for the particular instrument used in chastisement. It is imperative that we understand in deep communion with God Himself His intention in such circumstances, lest the calamity pass in vain upon those who are affected; or lest the message of God be missed by those for whom it is intended as a warning. As Art Katz says in reference to the Jewish Holocaust under Hitler, "The only thing that can be more tragic for us Jews is to have suffered ultimately, and still not to have properly understood what that suffering meant in the intention of God, simply because we could not bring ourselves to believe that God could be its author" (The Holocaust: Where Was God?, Introduction). Oswald Chambers captures this verity with striking accuracy, "There is a connection between the strange providences of God and what we know of Him, and we have to learn to interpret the mysteries of life in the light of our knowledge of God. Unless we can look the darkest, blackest fact full in the face without damaging God’s character, we do not yet know Him" (My Utmost for His Highest, July 29th).

While much more could be said, suffice it to say that the concise and less than exhaustive explanations given above typify the significance of the tools of wrath in the hands of the Living God. God uses whatever rods He wills in executing His judgement, but they are never arbitrary or without purpose. Whenever God chastises or judges a people His purpose is always redemptive. As the Lord declared to me regarding the Tsunami, "This is no accident. It is not happenstance. I am purposeful in all My ways. From the beginning to the end I am the Ancient of Days" (see Waters of God's Justice post). "And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD [is] a God of judgment: blessed [are] all they that wait for him" (Isaiah 30:18).

When the end of the world has come, initiated by the return of Jesus Christ, hell itself will be the eternal experience of all who have not intimately known God in life. The Word of God refers to the final judgement of God as the second death, in which a lake of fire and brimstone burn and the torment of hell's inhabitants rises day and night forever (Revelation 14:10-11, 20:11-15, Matthew 25:41). Deuteronomy 4:24 states, "For the LORD thy God [is] a consuming fire, [even] a jealous God," which is reiterated in Hebrews 12:29. It is therefore no mere coincidence that the instrument of the last judgement determined upon all the ungodly is described as an unquenchable and furious flame, as it is the final and ultimate picture of the Almighty God in both unfailing love and perfect justice. We can see then why it is an unspeakable tragedy anytime someone would dare to suggest that He is merely a God of love while failing to recognize that His justice requires accountability to His holiness, "without which no man shall see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). God's judgement is one of the greatest expressions of His love. What a longsuffering Lover and Judge God truly is.

Originally posted 9/3/2005 at 2:53 AM

Count the Cost

2007-02-23T02:47:00.000-08:00

"One thing thou lackest...come, take up the cross, and follow Me."
Mark 10:21

"The rich young ruler had the master passion to be perfect. When he saw Jesus Christ, he wanted to be like Him. Our Lord never puts personal holiness to the fore when He calls a disciple; He puts absolute annihilation of my right to myself and identification with Himself - a relationship with Himself in which there is no other relationship. Luke 14:26 has nothing to do with salvation or sanctification, but with unconditional identification with Jesus Christ. Very few of us know the absolute "go" of abandonment to Jesus.

"'Then Jesus beholding him loved him.' The look of Jesus will mean a heart broken for ever from allegiance to any other person or thing. Has Jesus ever looked at you? The look of Jesus transforms and transfixes. Where you are "soft" with God is where the Lord has looked at you. If you are hard and vindictive, insistent on your own way, certain that the other person is more likely to be in the wrong than you are, it is an indication that there are whole tracts of your nature that have never been transformed by His gaze.

"'One thing thou lackest...' The only "good thing" from Jesus Christ's point of view is union with Himself and nothing in between.

"'Sell whatsoever thou hast...' I must reduce myself until I am a mere conscious man, I must fundamentally renounce possessions of all kinds, not to save my soul (only one thing saves a man - absolute reliance upon Jesus Christ) - but in order to follow Jesus. 'Come, and follow Me.' And the road is the way He went."

My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers, September 28

Why do we want something other than what God wants? When did we decide that there was something better, that we could come up with a plan, a method, a design that supercedes our Maker's? We spend countless hours on all sorts of activities, thinking that by offering our religious services God will somehow be pleased with our effort. What if He were to look upon these things, and in looking with His piercing insight, grant us the slightest glimpse of His perspective? Do you suppose we would finally begin seeing something that is far different than what we thought we saw?

"If any [man] come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost...So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple"(Luke 14:26-33, emphasis added).

Count the cost. When Jesus Christ was calling to Himself whosoever would come He made this awe-inspiring, nay, fear-inducing declaration. It was a command that would forever drive a nail in the coffin of every right we ever had to ourselves, our lives, our dreams, our ambitions, our hopes, our demands. The cost to those initial hearers of this tremendous word was EVERYTHING; and the cost to us is the same. This is what was required by the original twelve, the subsequent 120 in the Upper Room, the 3,000 following Pentecost, the man named Saul of Tarsus; and this is what is required of us, the church of Jesus Christ, today.

It has become so easy for us to pray, asking God to speak a word to us. We even say things like, "it doesn't matter how You speak, by whom You speak, or when You speak, just speak to me." But when the Almighty does speak we become bothered by what He says and bothered by the instrument He utilized in the delivery of His message to us, and this irritation is evidenced by our refusal to receive His Word. Oh, we might pay lip service to Him when He does speak, but we prove ourselves the obverse side of obedient disciples when we effectually hear but do not do. Yes, that is it, we are hearers of the word, but not doers of the word.

What if God chose to speak to you, pastor, brother, sister, Christian worker, through a thoroughly disadvantaged man, or maybe a youth of no seeming importance, a word that rocked your theology to its very core? Could you receive it? Or would you count the cost, and determine that the price is too high to pay to hear and obey that word which has issued forth from the very mouth of God Almighty through an instrument that shames your spiritual stature?

There are times when the authority from which we choose to operate is resolutely opposed to the moral qualities of life in the Holy Spirit. We somehow think that if we shout a little louder, stand a little taller, get our name out to a few more churches, thereby becoming recognized by the church at large, we finally have the platform from which to deliver the oracles of God. But such "oracles" were never received in the secret place, but too many times in prayerless meetings with fellow leaders, our church staff, our "executive" board, maybe even from our personal pet peaves that we think must irk God something aweful because of how such things so bother our flesh. We march out to the podium, delivering an impassioned message to the congregation, calling more attention to the sweat running down our furled brow than to the beating of God's heart for His church. We have no authority, because we refuse to abide in the Ultimate Authority. But to abide in this Authority requires a humility that will break every last bone in the spiritual legs we once stood on; it will crush the pomp protruding from our lofty look; it will throw our reputations right under the feet of the very men and women before whom we would so desire to be held in esteem.

"The highest authority conceivable for a man is that of a holy character. The holiest character is the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore His statements are never dogmas, they are declarations...There is no argument or discussion in what He says, it is not a question of the insight of a marvellous man, but a question of speaking with authority. 'He taught them as one having authority' (Matthew 7:29)..." (If Thou Wilt Be Perfect, Oswald Chambers).

Holiness is what is required. But this holiness is something altogether different from what we account as holiness. We look on the outward appearance. "How often do you attend church? Do you watch rated "R" movies? Do you pay your tithes? How are you serving the local body? Do you have a regular devotional time?" There is a quality of life in true holiness that shames every arrogant answer to the above queries. This holiness is not one of doing, it is one of being. "Be ye holy..." (1Peter 1:16). That is the command, not "Do ye holiness." For out of that true being shall flow all true doing, as God has said, "Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I [am] the LORD your God. And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I [am] the LORD which sanctify you" (Leviticus 20:8). "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves" (James 1:22). This is a word spoken to those who have been begotten by the Spirit of God into an entirely new life, one of a perpetual offering unto God as His firstfruits (see James 1:18). Our part is to consecrate our holy selves unto God to whatever end He shall see fit. Then shall we bear His image; then shall we wait and watch until we hear the Voice of our Good Shepherd; then shall we become doers of the word that we hear. Then maybe, just maybe, God will entrust us with the incontrovertible utterances of His Holy Spirit, the delivery of His eternal Word.

But we have been no better than the devils who believe in proper doctrine, and tremble (see James 2:19). In fact, I suspect our state is much worse, in that we hold fast our orthodoxy, clinging to our dogma in a swift descent to hell, or at the very best to a salvation that barely escapes the flames of eternal judgement, because we do not know how to tremble any more at the Word of Yahweh. We have forgotten that our worship of God is to be offered with a holy fear, our rejoicing in God is to be coupled with trembling (Psalm 2:11). Our current condition is dangerously near that of the church of Ephesus which tested and rejected false apostles, refused false doctrines, and maintained a show of works that the world would readily acknowledge as worthy of praise. Although, I dare say we could scarcely discern the true apostles or prophets from the false any more, calling the false true and scorning the real spokesmen as babblers and annoyances. For we have lost our First Love, all because we esteemed the cost too high, the price too astronomical to pay. We have loved our lives too much to lose them; but we will lose them, every last one, if we will not lay our lives down at the altar of God and refuse to take them back up again for ourselves. "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal" (John 12:25).

"These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have [somewhat] against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent" (Revelation 2:1-5).

The candlestick of the temple was to be made of one piece of beaten gold, all fashioned from one lump of that precious metal, filled with oil, and lit aflame to give light within the temple. This flame was to be a reflection and a picture of the Glory of the God of Israel, Who would inhabit this holy place, placing His Name there as His special abode amongst men. On each of those seven candlesticks within the holy place would be the likeness of the blossom of an almond branch. The almond tree was the first to blossom in the spring in the Near East. It was the first sign of life arising from death, the picture of a hastening of God's Word, as the LORD Himself would watch over His own word to perform it (see Jeremiah 1:11-12). This is the candlestick referred to in Revelation 1 & 2 as a metaphor for the church of Jesus Christ, the Firstbegotten from the dead. This is the candlestick that will be removed out of its place if the first works are not worked, if repentance is not fully wrought within our hearts, if we do not remember the height from which we have fallen and fall before the feet of our First Love in abandoned love to Him once again. "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God" (Revelation 2:7). The converse of this promise to overcomers must then be a fearful removal from God's Presence into the horrific lot of darkness and eternal "death" reserved for all workers of iniquity--workers indeed, but workers to what end? (see Matthew 7:23).

"He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37). To love Jesus Christ supremely is to put our love for anyone or anything else in the category of hatred in comparison to our love for Him. Love is the work that is necessary to prove our authenticity as disciples of Jesus Christ (see John 13:35). But it is not, nor will it ever be, love in word only, but love in very deed. This love is in itself the first works, as it is the contingent of the first and greatest commandment-- "Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all..." It is a love that consumes and swallows up every affection, every passion, and every desire, expressing itself in every activity of the saint of God. For this is the very love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, echoing back unto the One Who first loved us and consequently to everyone around us. When we see our own sordid nature in the light of God, it becomes almost easy to love the most wretched man or woman we can think of, because we realize that the vilest soul on the face of the earth cannot approach the proclivity for wickedness we have seen in our own hearts. Thus love unto God and neighbor is worked thoroughly within the church redounding unto the glory of God.

So many have heard the hard words of Jesus and turned back, never to follow again. Oh, they may follow in word, but their deeds and the limited space for God in their hearts betrays their profession of discipleship. But there are those who have counted the cost, there is a host of holy saints who have considered the price of discipleship, and counted such as less than excrement in comparison to the glorious riches in Jesus Christ the LORD. Have you ever scooped up cat droppings from the litter box? Have you ever scraped dog feces off the bottom of your shoe? Have you ever smelled the inside of a portable toilet that is not masked by perfumes or fragrances? This, my friend, is what the Apostle Paul said the grandeur of his life condescended to when compared to knowing his Lord (see Philippians 3:8). All the haughty authorities of earth, all the high-minded men, all the contrary arguments, all the worshippers in the synagogue of Satan will come and bow down to worship God before the feet of the holy, humble saints who have counted the cost and considered it well worth the trade to give everything they have and everything they are for the nail-pierced Lamb of Glory. "Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee" (Revelation 3:9). What greater testimony could be proved before an unbelieving world than the fact that the Slaughtered Lamb is the selfsame Conquering King Who has loved me? From the trembling lips of these broken but overcoming saints is whispered the most confident confession of faith uttered by those who have cast away their nets, their wives, their very lives, and followed Him, "'Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God'...we have counted the cost and esteemed You alone worthy of our love and our lives" (John 6:68-69).

my Exceeding Great Reward

2007-02-14T01:19:00.000-08:00

"After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I [am] thy shield, [and] thy exceeding great reward."

~Genesis 15:1

"And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready."

~Revelation 19:6-7

Christ's blood in sordid death

On the Cross was shed for life;

The perfect beauty of our Lord, no less,

He yielded to purchase a worthy Wife.

Beloved Jesus, my King so fair,

From this dust unclean You raise

The blossom of love to You so near;

Your Name forever I shall praise.

~wilhelm 42

"I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

~Philippians 3:14

My goal is God Himself, not joy, nor peace,
Nor even blessing, but Himself, my God;
'Tis His to lead me there - not mine, but His—
At any cost, dear Lord, by any road.

~F. Brook

"...as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured [it] on his head."

~Mark 14:3

Thou art my Prize, my Great Reward;
On Thee all night and day
I wait alone, my Gracious Lord;
Thou art my Hope and Stay.

With Love's pure heart I truly cry
To Thee my Holy King;
My soul does groan with deepest sigh,
Thou art my Everything.

In faith fulfilled, with sight to see
Thy hidden Face on earth;
Within Thy Glory my soul shall breathe
To the Lamb His endless worth.

My heart I break, my love to pour
An offering of freewill;
My heart is Thine--I give it, Lord,
To my Great Reward, my Shield.

~wilhelm42

Cleanse the House

2007-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

John 2:13-16
And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: and when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

The time of passover was at hand, a celebration of God's deliverance wrought for the children of Israel. They were no longer slaves unto Egypt, no longer strangers and foreigners in a foreign land, no longer bound to the devices and decrees of a pagan king. Israel was now the purchased possession of Almighty God, a special and unique nation unlike any other in all the earth. As a matter of fact, there had never been, nor would there ever be, a nation like this one throughout the history of creation. Israel had become the inheritance of Yahweh, His lot, His portion. She was now to be a kingdom of priests, separate from the world, a witness unto the world of the one true and living God.

Passover was a time when the lamb of sacrifice was slaughtered, roasted, and eaten in combination with herbs and unleavened bread. All such intimate details of this meal foreshadowed the coming of a Lamb that would bring the only abiding deliverance from the most real slavery any man, woman, or child has ever known--the slavery of sin. Jesus Christ is the Lamb slaughtered from the foundation of the world, the Lord of Glory put to death at the hands of sinful men for sinful men. He is the Son of God Who became sin in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. And He did so by being bruised in unimaginable torment by the LORD Himself, even the Father--the obedient Son yielding Himself unto the death of the cross for His Father's ultimate pleasure and glory. Now that is sonship! Oh, the wonder of this most humble and meek Master of creation pouring out His soul unto death, His spotless blood as an offering for our sin. All glory to His Name forever. Amen.

It was in the context of this remembrance of Divine deliverance from slavery that the Son of God entered into Jerusalem to gaze upon the temple with piercing insight that the eyes of men could not dream to view. There was a perspective in the mind of Jesus that not even His disciples could yet grasp, though they had been with Him now for approximately three years. It was this single event that most precipitated the condemnation of this unique Prophet from Nazareth by the religious rulers of the Jews. The Son came to do what His Father had bid Him in ages of eternity past. Jerusalem was called by Jeremiah, "the throne of the LORD." It was supposed to be a city set apart in holiness unto the Holy Majesty on High, a resting place for His Glory to abide, a place where "all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD, to Jerusalem" (Jeremiah 3:17). And these visiting foreigners would henceforth forsake all their idols, cast away the false gods they had embraced, reject the vanity taught them for generations, "neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart."

But this city had become a center of religious excitement, housing the most hypocritical group of religious zealots in all the earth. And the temple in Jerusalem, an exemplar of spiritual magnificence erected by the hands of men, had become a house of worldly trade and merchandise. The house of prayer for all nations had been transformed into an altar of idolatry of the most insidious sort, so much so that thieves had found refuge in the resting place of God's Glory. Yet, "behold, even I have seen it, saith the LORD" (Jeremiah 7:11). The eyes of relentless fire and furious flame had fallen upon this place of worship at last in the physical optics of the Son of Man. The time of Israel's visitation has come.

"[Hezekiah] in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the LORD, and repaired them. And he brought in the priests and the Levites, and gathered them together into the east street, and said unto them, Hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the LORD God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy [place]...And they gathered their brethren, and sanctified themselves, and came, according to the commandment of the king, by the words of the LORD, to cleanse the house of the LORD" (2Chronicles 29:3-15, emphasis added).

It is most noteworthy that the cleansing of the temple of God took place before the celebration of the Passover. In both circumstances the habitation of God's holiness had been defiled by His own people. When Hezekiah was exalted into the position of king of Judah the temple was in shambles. Its doors had been shut by Ahaz, the laver had been removed from its base, the lamps had gone out and the light was passed--darkness had entered the very house of the Living God. The previous king Ahaz had strayed far from the Lord, committing whoredom with the gods of Damascus, even building an altar after the pattern of one he saw in this pagan city, adjuring a priest to fashion one like it by which he might offer unclean sacrifices. What a tremendous indictment against a nation and a people when even the sacrifices have become sin. "The sacrifice of the wicked [is] an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright [is] his delight" (Proverbs 15:8). The delight of the LORD has become despised in exchange for the worship of the works fashioned by men's minds and hands.

Into these tragic circumstances Hezekiah arrives on the scene, raised up as a man whose deeds would be compared with Israel's prototypical king, David the son of Jesse. And in the first year and the first month he sets out to reopen the house of God. Cleansing must take place before sacrifices can again be offered in holiness, that they might be acceptable to the Holy One of Israel. And before cleansing can take place in God's sanctuary the priests themselves and the Levites must be sanctified. Indeed, the very ones who would exact this work of sanctifying the holy things of the temple must themselves be subjected to the scrutiny of God's piercing perspective. Cleansing would therefore be a consummate work, one that leaves not one who would come into the habitation of Yahweh untouched by its effects, from the temple officers to the eventual worshippers who would dawn the holy ground of God's house.

Wrath had come upon God's people insomuch that the entire nation stood under the abiding curse that rests upon all the children of disobedience. Only there remains an acute awareness in the mind of Hezekiah that Israel itself suffered more severely for her sins, for she alone has known the secret things of the covenant of God, she alone had been bound to the Sovereign of heaven and earth as His special nation, His treasured possession. Thus, this twenty-something king seeks to enter into a covenant with the God of Israel, calling the entire nation into that covenant; including the estranged and remnant people of the northern tribes of Israel left over from the Assyrian destruction of Samaria.

This was to be a true covenant for Israel, one that invited her back into union with her ever-faithful God, the true bond of love with the Eternal Lord of creation and King of the nations. But before this covenant could be rendered binding between God and man cleansing was necessary. All of the filthiness, all of the idolatrous symbols, all of the uncleanness had to expunged from the temple of God. For in this single place has Yahweh chosen to reside as His unique resting place. Anything that might cause Him grief, anything that could cause Him sorrow of heart, anything that would invite censure must be removed. And not only removed, but utterly destroyed in the valley of Kidron, the destined place of destruction for all works of impurity. A destiny of fire unto absolute abolition and annihilation. When all has been cleansed, the temple will finally be the place of Israel's ultimate remembrance, the culmination of deliverance from bondage--the Passover will again be celebrated, along with all that this feast prophetically foreshadows of the first and second coming of the Lamb slaughtered from the foundations of the world (see 1Corinthians 11:23-26, Revelation 13:8).

We have forgotten what it costs to offer God Almighty sacrifices that are acceptable in His sight. Above all, it cost God absolutely everything in order to enable us to come unto Him acceptably. Jesus Christ offered Himself without spot or blemish unto the Father that we might come by Him into the Presence of His eternal glory. Every drop of priceless blood that was spilled was the blood of God as Man that purchased our redemption. The Son of God gave everything, so how is it that we think anything less than everything we have and everything we are is acceptable unto the Father of all majesty? "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour" (Ephesians 5:1-2).

The Lord Jesus is the firstfruits from the dead, and He calls this day to a host of dead saints, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Ephesians 5:14). Spiritual sacrifices, an offering of our very lives--body, soul and spirit--this is what is required by the Almighty of all His sons and daughters. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, [which is] your reasonable service" (Romans 12:1). The honor of God is at stake in our mortal bodies, in our very thoughts, in our most personal and intimate motives. What have you offered unto the God of creation this day in your thought life? Upon what have you meditated? In what way have you inched ever nearer the final placement of your life in the spiritual house built unto the Father for His holy dwelling? Or have you slipped out of the way, resisting the nudges of the Holy Spirit in the most simple of things of your life, because such matters are far too "trivial" for God to be interested in them. "Why, God is much too busy to be bothered by such impertinent requests for direction in the nitty gritty of life. He gave us a brain, we are supposed to use it!" Ah, the utter vanity and foolishness of such an argument. For it misses the sweet brooding of God's Spirit over all that we are, as He gently draws us deeper into the categorical Lordship and reign of Jesus Christ over all that we are, even in the most seemingly insignificant of matters.

When creation was taking shape the Holy Spirit hovered over the face of the deep upon the earth. And in the age of Christ's church we find that He now hovers over the new creation of sons and daughters who have been made anew in Christ, forming and shaping our lives as He did with the mountain heights and ocean depths; only this time such high heights and such deep depths are the unknowable places of our own souls that God is fashioning into the likeness of His Son. The redemption in Christ is a kind of new creation, which is borne witness to by John the apostle from the first few verses of his masterpiece on the earthly life of the Son of Man (see John 1). This is why the Passover is so important to the whole issue of cleansing the temple. For redemption's fullest work to take affect God's dwelling place must be clean and holy, "For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee" (Deuteronomy 23:14). This was true for Israel as she escaped Egyptian captivity and was preparing to enter the promised land; it was true for Judah and remnant Israel as they prepared to renew their covenant with Yahweh; and it is true this day for the church of Jesus Christ as we enter into and live under the bond of the New Covenant. Cleansing and redemption are inextricably bound, the nexus being God's supreme holiness and worth and glory.

Cleansing, cleansing, cleansing! It must take place in the church of Jesus Christ once again. When we read of the remembrance of Christ's redemptive work in that wonderfully thorough instruction for worship contained in the first letter to the Corinthians we find a fearful passage. "...as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink [this] cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord...For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body" (1Corinthians 11:26-29). God says very clearly that as a result of uncleanness within the body "many [are] weak and sickly among you, and many sleep," not as some random sickness passing from person to person, not as a result of general fatigue for over-exerting themselves in spiritual matters, but for not properly discerning and thereby respecting and ministering unto the Lord's church. Sin had creeped into this body and God had rendered a frighteningly immediate retribution to some who had been agents of this sin's perpetuation.

How could we possibly think that we are exempt from such retribution, who have strayed so far from the intended purpose of the Living God for His holy temple, the church. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and [that] the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which [temple] ye are" (1Corinthians 3:16-17). We have attempted to build upon the foundation of Jesus Christ a terribly hideous house erected by tools of lies, fashioned by unclean hands, and bearing a facade that is austentatious in outward display, but utterly void of the Holy Spirit within. Oh, God remember us for Your mercy.

We have carried on with our affectation, claiming to bring light and life to the world, all the while carrying on in darkness and death. Whether it be a false Gospel of prosperity or inward hypocrisy or lukewarm love for Christ, the church of the Living Christ in America is seemingly perfectly content to march on in death without any recognition of her own spiritual condition. Christian colleges grow in number and change their names to properly indicate their own estrangement from God, as they turn out more and more spiritually bankrupt believers into the world of American ambition. We complain about no prayer in schools when prayer is tragically absent in the lives of the overwhelming majority of churches across the nation. We have hired professional clergy who fill their days with meetings, and we want nothing more than to hear a good "word" from them on Sunday. What happened to the single aim of the ministry of the original apostles, "But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word" (Acts 6:4)? We are no more the bride of Christ in our current state than a whore is the bride of the one buys her services for the night. For we walk on in iniquity unaware of such by virtue of our spiritual numbness, and appear before God once or twice, or more per week to raise unholy hands, offering unholy prayers unto the Holy One of Israel. Do not think, Bride of Jesus Christ in America, that you will not be held to account for your abandonment of God's Presence. He is coming, the Lord of the church, the Head of the body is coming to this nation and her church. Will you know the hour of your visitation? Cleanse the house!

Christ's visitation will bring a scourge once again to His house as He overturns the tables of the moneychangers, prosperity preachers, idle shepherds, and religious worshippers interested in their own glory, their own ambitions in life, their own earth-bound affections. Homosexual pastors, elders and deacons bound to pornography, child molestors in our pews, worldly entertainment chosen over worship and intercession unto the Living God--and we refuse to acknowledge our culpability in these transgressions--all evidence that we have cast away our First Love. We have been bought by the world for a pittance; or rather sold ourselves willingly into slavery to a dead system of corruption and vileness. We maintain our religious programs ad infinitum, offer empty prayers, refuse to wait upon God for more than a moment of silence, and walk on in darkness, destined for a land of promise that is void of God's Glory, because we neglected the only One for Whom we were promised that land to begin with. Those very prayers that we offer in uncleanness, those daily and weekly sacrifices offered from disloyal hearts will become the indictment against us when the Lord of hosts visits His church. Terror will be brought to this nation in a terribly real way, and its Author will be the Judge of all mankind, Who will stop at nothing to sanctify a people for His inheritance. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25). The time came in the land of God's promise that the nations who inhabited the territory were spued out by the land for their sin. We had better pay careful heed, "that the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that [were] before you" (Leviticus 18:28). Church in America, you will bear great responsibility for the lives of this nation. Are you ready to count the cost for your ambivalence toward God? Your spiritual blindness will be evidenced in the very absence of His Glory from your midst when you see darkness all around, and your lamps have gone out for want of oil. The Holy Spirit adjures us, "Dearly beloved, I beseech [you] as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by [your] good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation" (1Peter 2:11-12).

Redemption, the purchasing back from slavery as a possession for the very One Who purchased at His own expense. Only the expense was incalculable, for it was His very blood that was the price. But the house of God had to be cleansed before the Passover Lamb was sacrificed. The Great High Priest entered into His Father's house and cast away all the impurity and rottenness and merchandise of men, as God entered His temple one last time before it would finally be destroyed in 70 A.D. And so it will be in the church. We cannot drink of His blood and eat of His flesh any longer in our estrangement from the Father's Presence and think that we shall be accepted upon the altar of His sacrifice. We have thought that we could place the ark of God's Presence upon a new cart thereby carrying it back to its rightful place in our lives. But the mercy of God will only strike down such ambition, creating a breach where we thought we were operating in a spiritually noble task (see 2Samuel 6). If only we were to inquire of God Almighty, we would soon find that we have treated Him in like manner as the heathen have treated Him, creating no distinction between His sheer majesty and holiness from the idols of the people around us (1Samuel 6).

Only the uniquely consecrated Levites could carry the ark of God into the city of David; only the priests and the Levites could remove all the filthiness from the temple of God in preparation for the renewal of God's covenant; only the true priests of God can rightfully and properly bear upon their shoulders the ineffable weight of God's Glory in the church. There shall be a sanctified remnant, a royal priesthood, who will be sent to tend to this work of calling upon the Lord day and night in prayer, in song, in worship--the very offering of themselves without revocation to Almighty God. "And he set the Levites in the house of the LORD with cymbals, with psalteries, and with harps, according to the commandment of David, and of Gad the king's seer, and Nathan the prophet: for [so was] the commandment of the LORD by his prophets. And the Levites stood with the instruments of David, and the priests with the trumpets...And all the congregation worshipped, and the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded: [and] all [this continued] until the burnt offering was finished. And when they had made an end of offering, the king and all that were present with him bowed themselves, and worshipped" (2Chronicles 29:25-29). For so the church is intended to be that royal priesthood, serving the unutterably regal King of kings.

Before the final Passover of the Son of Man's earthly life would come Jesus set aside His garments, took up a towel, and began to wash the feet of His disciples, for "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me" (John 13:8). This is the Passover that was in view in the day when Moses spread the lamb's blood for a token that God's judgement might pass over His people Israel (see Exodus 12). And in this momentous event all leaven would be purged from the house. The leaven that was removed was a picture of the removal of all iniquity so that we could be made partakers of Christ, and be raised up an house of worship and dwelling unto the Son and the Father (see Hebrews 3). Thus, redemption would take place and the cleansing of the temple of Yahweh would be fully accomplished, that He might receive "the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints" (Ephesians 1:18). The High Priest and Passover Lamb had come to cleanse and redeem, purify and sanctify unto Himself a people from all nations, tribes, and tongues who would become living stones built into an holy habitation for the glory of God; and He will visit His church in America to this end. For Jesus Christ will have a holy bride joined in union unto Himself in the everlasting New Covenant.

God has set His holy gaze upon His church in this nation. His house is closed up, its doors sealed, the light is gone out. But the Lord of lords is going to visit His church once again. Will we be ready when He comes? Or will we be found asleep with lamps snuffed out, when we should have been watching with the fiery light of the Spirit of God ablaze in our hearts? Redemption and cleansing are going to be thoroughly wrought within the church of America. But what will be our end if we refuse to be cleansed? Judgement is the only alternative to the offering of life through Jesus Christ, and that judgement is a supreme mercy meted out by God upon all who strive against His Spirit. Oh, church of Jesus Christ in America, I will weep for you upon the high places, my heart will break for you for your breaking of God's covenant, my eyes will run down with tears for you if you do not return to your King and your God. "He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." (Revelation 22:20).

Cleanse the house.

Holy Habitation

2006-08-27T03:01:00.000-07:00

Why should we wait for the Lord Jesus Christ to come and revive His church once again in this nation? What profit is there in continuing for long seasons without any apparent activity or productivity? What will men say when they look at us and see that we have not gotten up, nor moved from our places? As a matter of interest, where is the place that we are currently found in the eyes of God?

Between porch and altar...weeping. Where else ought we to be found if not in this single place, doing this single work? It is indeed a work of eternal consequence before Almighty God, but not to be counted as such by those who would not submit themselves unto the beautifully slow and steady and perfect ways of the Eternal Son Who waited for hundreds of fallen generations before entering the midst of His own creation for Redemption's consummate work. "In the fullness of time..." (see Galatians 4:4).

Oh, how we need to learn the fullness of God's time! What is the hurry? Where do we need to be if not at His holy altar, being altered from every unholy ambition and motive, rightly adjusted unto His perfect time, His perfect way, His PERFECTION. Jesus Christ calls us to no other place than to His Father's footstool for one single activity by which the entirety of our lives shall be judged: WORSHIP.

"But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him" (John 4:23). What is the context of that worship? Is it contained merely in the audible words of a song, or expressed only in our ostensible acts of service? Never! Consider this one thing: "worshippers...in Spirit and in Truth." It is not an activity at all that is being sought by the Father, it is the very essence of who we are created to be, out of which will flow the perfection of activity for the utmost glory unto the Father. This state of being requires the melding and bringing together of every activity purposed for God's saints: waiting, worship, work... Such was the calling of a priest who waited upon God before His altar, offering sacrifices by fire in worship, working according to the directives of the One for Whom and by Whom they had been appointed unto the priesthood.

Jesus Christ is to be Lord of all I am, not merely a Savior for my own conveniences. "Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure...For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ"(2Peter 1:10-11). Give diligence to what? To a ministry that shall never end, to behold the beauty of the Lord, inquiring in His temple, dwelling in His secret place forevermore (see Psalm 27). "Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not..." (see 2Corinthians 3:17-4:18). Thus we are adjured: Add to the faith of the Holy God a compounding of those holy qualities of the One Who died, having become partakers of His divine nature--fruit meet for repentance, indeed, the fruit of the Spirit. It is required that we work out what God has so mercifully worked in us, manifesting His life in the daily tasks granted His own. But will we honor Him there, in the round and round of life? Will we be worshippers when no one is around to critique our walk with God? Where is the sensitivity to His Spirit that runs through the very fibers of our soul, keeping us so tender and humble and broken, lest we be found without humility before the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity? "For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name [is] Holy; I dwell in the high and holy [place], with him also [that is] of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones" (Isaiah 57:15). Oh, the sweet romance of the High and Holy Lord, a life raised from death to dwell in union with Jesus Christ, where we are ever found within the gates of His Sanctuary and at the Refuge of His throne set up from the ages of eternity. "A glorious high throne from the beginning [is] the place of our sanctuary" (Jeremiah 17:12).

Revival, what a tremendous invitation. Consider what it costs to give account for your own culpability as a part of the body of Jesus Christ that is found to be dead without the Living Head. It will require identification with a household of unrepentant, obstinate, and stiffnecked children who live as bastards rather than sons or daughters. It will require a soul that breaks with a longing for God the Father to reign as King once again over rebellious servants. It will require identification with the beating of God's heart so deep and unrelenting that the slightest breath of His Voice will cause the most immediate attention of your every faculty. You wait, you watch, you weep, you see, and you sit in silence.

Daniel so yearned for the God of Israel to restore His people unto Himself that he associated himself in an indistinguishable way with a wayward people and their sins. In his intercession before God's throne he never pointed the finger at "those sinners." Rather, he lumped himself in with the most heinous of transgressors, if perchance the Lord of heaven would hear and answer the cry of one of His most precious saints in all the earth. "And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes: And I prayed unto the LORD my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments; We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled..." (Daniel 9:3-5). The man who set his face toward the holy city in prayer three times a day in the face of deadly consequence, called on the Name of Yahweh, identifying himself with the very ones who flung themselves out from God's Presence in iniquity. And God so readily received and answered Daniel's interecession that His commandment went forth even at the beginning of his supplications (Daniel 9:20-23). Pray without ceasing...It is a call to unbroken communion with the One Who never sleeps nor slumbers. So how is it that we could ever be found to be asleep in death as the only people on the face of the earth with whom God Almighty has intended to share the wonders of Himself, for the glory of His Eternal Name?

When will we see revival as God has intended it? God's harvest will never be accomplished by our contrived conventions, our calling of unholy assemblies, or our pretense of austentatious prayer. "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest..." We say, "Go and do." God says, "Watch and pray." "No," we reply, "That is completely impractical for such an hour as we are in. We must get a move on. What about the Great Commission?" As if God has forgotten about the commandment to go and make disciples. But we cannot produce what we have been unwilling to become ourselves. If we continue in the way we now walk as the church of Jesus Christ in America, we will merely fulfill the words of our Lord spoken to the Pharisees, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves" (Matthew 23:15). We were never called to "evangelize the nations." We are commanded to make disciples of the nations, to become such a continual fragrance of Jesus Christ unto the Father wheresoever He places us that the Holy Spirit has free reign in and through us to bind up the broken hearted, to set the captives free, to preach the gospel to the poor. For out of this ostensibly miserable and undesirable group God will appoint and mold and shape disciples for Himself by the hands of His chosen, who will be spent upon His glory by whatever means He sees fit. "For ye see your calling, brethren...God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised...That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord" (1Corinthians 1:26-31).

"Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory: where [is] thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies toward me? are they restrained? Doubtless thou [art] our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O LORD, [art] our father, our redeemer; thy name [is] from everlasting. O LORD, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, [and] hardened our heart from thy fear? Return for thy servants' sake, the tribes of thine inheritance" (Isaiah 63:15-17).

"Oh that Thou wouldest rend the heavens..." The preceding verses are the key to the answer to this prayer of the prophet of Isaiah. A watchman of God pleading with God for nothing other than His glory and His inheritance. "Have for Yourself, my God, a people who are nothing other than a continual offering unto YOU and You alone." The day will come when Jesus Christ will have a true inheritance among the nations, and His reign will be fully displayed among the kingdoms of the earth as every other dominion bows its knee to Him as Lord of all. But in this hour, the question remains, What shall become of the church in America? Weep between porch and altar. Bow your head, rend your heart, cry out day and night. Give Him no rest, no silence, until He establishes His resting place in the midst of His church once again.

"Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where [is] their God?" (Joel 2:17). Wherefore should they say...Where is their God? Is that not the terrible mockery of the world cast upon us day after day? But we shrug it off, smugly replying that we serve the Living God, as we walk straight down the broad path to death and destruction.

Where are the priests? Where are the ministers of God? Where are those who will be satisfied no more with this world's affections, this world's desires, this world's fancies; those who want nothing more than to be worshippers and lovers of the King of kings? We will never know what it is to be a worshipper until we have gone to our own funeral, dying to everything we ever wanted to be outside of God, or even for Him! God will never be a means to our end. He will never spend His glory upon our ambitions and aims. Jesus Christ did not die to use us or to place us as trophies on display for men to marvel at. The Lord of heaven and earth died to purchase for Himself a treasured possession for His Father in whom He might come and take up His rest, indeed a holy habitation for His Presence--a bride bought with priceless blood for the indescribably majestic Bridegroom and King. What will you be to Him? A vessel useful for temporary use amidst men or an eternal habitation for His Glory?

A temple serves no other purpose than to house the One for Whom it was built. It is utterly useless unless God inhabits it. All the activity around the temple means absolutely nothing if the Living Christ arrives only to depart with tears because He found not a place suitable for His rest. And so our lives are to be a living sacrifice, offered day and night without ceasing (see Romans 12:1-2). "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book [it is] written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law [is] within my heart" (Psalm 40:6-8). So shall we prove what is that good, and pleasing, and perfect will of God, Whose will shall persist in preparing a people for His habitation in the earth. For the hope of glory is manifested in this one mystery: Christ in you (see Colossians 1:27). And in Jesus Christ we find that single and sole ONE WHO IS GREATER THAN THE TEMPLE. For He is the One Who "shall build an house for my name; and he shall be my son, and I [will be] his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel for ever" (1Chronicles 22:10). And He is building His most precious possession in all the earth into a House of Rest for His Father, living stone meticulously placed upon living stone, fashioned by the hands of the Masterbuilder and Chief Cornerstone Himself (see Ephesians 2:19-22, 1Peter 2:4-5).

This is the expressed purpose of God breaking open our graves, so that He might have for Himself that place of everlasting, undisturbed rest for His Glory. And the covenant of God will be established in all verity with His people, the Bridegroom bringing into union with Himself His spotless bride, an eternal covenant of peace. "For we [were] bondmen; yet our God hath not forsaken us in our bondage, but hath extended mercy unto us...to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to repair the desolations thereof..." (Ezra 9:9). The Lord shall have a place for Himself that will be sanctified by His Glory and His sanctuary will forever be in the midst of His people. "Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves..." (Ezekiel 37:12). Why? Because "I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore" (Ezekiel 37:26-28).

Only the broken, only the contrite, only the humble, only the ones who have died with Him that they might live with Him and unto Him--these alone will God Almighty revive, unto these alone will He come to resurrect to be a living bride for His Son. "My church has broken the bond of My covenant and cast off the cords of My love. Her tabernacle has fallen. The stakes thereof have been removed. But I the Lord Jesus Christ declare the decree pronounced from eternity, for I am the Son, and with My Father one: all nations, tribes, and tongues shall serve Me. For I am building an holy house of habitation for My Father's glory. So shall it be. Amen" (see For Weeping and For Wailing post). So the Lord will say of those found to be true children of Zion, "This [is] my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it" (Psalm 132:14). For the Spirit of God has spoken and written it, and it shall be fulfilled, "Behold, the tabernacle of God [is] with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, [and be] their God" (Revelation 21:3). And all of eternity shall tell for the Glory of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the infinite, the indescribable, the immortal King and Lord and Savior.

Watchman by What Means?

2006-08-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

We have trusted far too long in our current situation within the church. We have stood in the midst of dead saints, preaching dead sermons, singing dead songs, praying dead prayers, all the while pointing our boney fingers at the world, proclaiming that it is dead and in need of life. We are without the Presence of God, marching toward a land of promise perfectly content to enter in without the One Who gave the promise to begin with. Yet there is in the church a group and a number who recognize the need for revival. But to acknowledge something by way of natural cognition is one thing; to judge spiritual things by the Holy Spirit is a wholly different matter. "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God...But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned...But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man" (1Corinthians 2:11-15). There is, therefore, a desperate and incalculable need to see the body of Christ as God sees it, and call on His Name in response to that revelation of the Spirit of God.

But what is the solution to our current condition? Is it another spurious work that tantalizes and titillates the outward senses of men, enabling them to think that by some feeling of a spiritual kind they are thereby safe from judgment to come? Even those who preach the need for revival are unwilling to pay the price that is required for this heaven sent redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ in His church. "We live in a generation that has never known revival—God's way. True revival changes the moral climate of an area or a nation. Without exception, all true revivals of the past began after years of agonizing, hell-robbing, earth-shaking, heaven-sent intercession. The secret to true revival in our own day is still the same. But where, oh, where, are the intercessors?" (Leonard Ravenhill). This group that acknowledges the deadness of the church has been as the man with a beam in his eye who points out the speck of dust in his neighbor's (see Matthew 7:1-6). This is because the beam has not been considered before he points out the speck. He is a hypocrite of the most tragic sorts. He has been granted the mercy of God by which he can see the dead bones in the valley, but he has not been willing to be brought down by the Spirit of God into the midst of that valley and behold the dryness, the stench, the utter hopelessness of these bones that he has beheld from afar.

"Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease. Wilt thou be angry with us for ever? wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations? Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?" (Psalm 85:4-6).

There is no identification with the heart of Jesus Christ Who alone can prophesy to these bones and bring life once again. The pastor, the teacher, the preacher stands aloof from his own condition, unwilling to be examined before the judgment seat of Christ in this present hour so that there will not be condemnation in the final hour. Oh, how tragic is the condition we are in as the body of Christ! We are intended to be the living, breathing, shining people who walk this earth as the primary means by which God has intended to introduce His Good News to the world. But we are lame, sick, and in many respects altogether dead.

How easy it is to point the finger, but never allow the Holy Spirit to deal with us on the deep issues of our hearts. It is not until we have been brought to the place of utter brokenness before Almighty God, and allowed Him to show us the things that no other man or woman in all creation can show us--the secret pride, the selfish motives, the vain ambitions. Only then will we be able to emerge from the secret place with the holy Christ to speak to an estranged bride of her own need for mercy of which we ourselves are partaking moment by moment. It is all too easy to covet the self-proclaimed title of "watchman" these days. How feignedly demure we have become and smooth in our operations within the church. We can look upon the social ills of nation and church, calling out to a "T" the sins and vitiations of an unholy tribe of people. But do not ask us to fall prostrate before the Living Christ for more than our daily devotional time requires, being examined to "the last aching abyss" of our own hearts by the God of Truth. The truth is, it is an honor to be so loved by God the Father that He will go to those places within our souls and deal with everything that could hinder His relationship with us. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable [are] his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" (Romans 11:33).

It has, in fact, become fashionable to speak of ourselves as watchmen, because the title allows us to call out the condition of the church and world with a sense of authority, albeit self-imposed authority. Oh how great was the cost for Ezekiel to bear that mark--yes, a mark--as watchman of God! He bore the sins of the people upon himself in identification with God's heart, he watched his wife die, unable to cry or lament her death; he saw the Almighty seated upon the throne of His Glory and collapsed in utter despair for his own life for the Majesty and Great Holiness that he beheld (See Ezekiel 1-4, 24). Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, these men knew the tremendous cost of this high calling of God; and to think how glibly we impose upon ourselves this ostensible title of honor, not realizing the actual horror that is faced by those who are in union with Christ in this most dreadful ministry. But we want nothing of the rejection and sorrow that comes with this rare grace of God. For His watchmen are to be so identified with His heart that He will take but three of His twelve closest followers aside to watch with Him, sharing in His sorrows, His tears, His sweating of blood. "And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me..." (Matthew 26:37-38).

Before Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem in its ultimate visitation from God He wept over the city. This Supreme Son of Man understood the full magnitude of that day of visitation, but with whom could He share that burden of the Father? He is the Root out of dry ground, despised and rejected of men, Who has carried our sorrows and God's all the way to the Cross (See Isaiah 53:1-5). His life on the earth is the paragon of priestly prayer, watching with God, speaking only what is heard from Him (see John 12:44-50).

"The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know [it]: the prophet [is] a fool, the spiritual man [is] mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred. The watchman of Ephraim [was] with my God: [but] the prophet [is] a snare of a fowler in all his ways, [and] hatred in the house of his God" (Hosea 9:7-8). Even in God's own house those whom He has sent to warn of impending judgment have been sneered at, rejected, and wholly discounted as mad men. No wonder, for the Lord Himself was said to be "beside Himself" and insane (Mark 3:21). Most ministers of God's altar are far too comfortable to be hated in His house, because the glory of God has no real place in their lives. If only we knew what God's visitation really meant for the house of God and its inhabitants--how terribly we would tremble for fear of His great Glory! "For the day of vengeance [is] in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come" (Isaiah 63:4). Vengeance and redemption, recompense for sin and for righteousness, go hand-in-hand when God visits His saints.

Prayer...when will we understand that simple yet indispensible aspect of our relationship with God? We cannot separate prayer and intercession from the church and remain the CHURCH. What sort of marriage would it be if the wife ran around doing work for her husband but never communicated with him? What sort of relationship would it be if a son toiled days on end for his father, to build him an house that is absolutely unsuitable for his abode, all because the son refused to confer with the father regarding what would most please him? We are a body severed from the Head. We think that running around in our busyness, doing great exploits for God is what He most desires from us. But we are the most insidious of hypocrites, calling the church to repair and rebuild the altars of prayer, as we neglect that very calling ourselves. "Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin, altars shall be unto him to sin" (Hosea 8:11). The very evidence of our insincere devotion will become the indictment against us on the final Day. All the while, we are daily grieving and spurning His Holy Spirit as He patiently and deliberately calls us back to the Father's footstool to tarry in prayer and silence, listening and crying the intercession of the Great Intercessor, united with His heart in its most secret groanings (see Romans 8:34 & Hebrews 7:25). That "one thing [that] is needful" (Luke 10:42).

"Son of man, do you see...?"
A watchman must see things from no other perspective than from the habitation of holiness with God Almighty Himself. To see as God sees, to see from His perspective, to see things coming from far off--this is what it is to be a watchman of the Lord Jesus Christ. But there are countless multitudes who judge by what they see from their own skewed point of view. There are innumerable companies who contend with men by nothing more than what they hear with their natural ears. But this is not what a watchman is, nor what a watchman does. Only after Ezekiel had been carried into the midst of the valley full of dead men's bones, gazing upon the slain with God's mind and with eyes opened by the Holy Spirit, Who lighted him into that valley, could this son of man finally hear with an understanding that would shake heaven itself when he spoke those requisite words in prophetic obedience. "O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD..." (Ezekiel 37:4).

A watchman for what? For what are we watching? From what vantage point do we view the impending danger? From whose perspective do we perceive the current condition of the church and the nation, and speak in reference to that which we see? Such cost, such a great and tremendous price must be paid before we will ever really know what it is to share God's heart and bear His burden in unceasing communion with Him. Perfect union with Christ Jesus the Lord of Glory...there is no other way. And whether He speaks or remains silent, you do only what you are bidden to do, and speak only what you are commanded to speak by the Eternal God of creation. What if the Lord Who created the very heavens and earth into existence by His Word chose to be silent for a time, would you share that deep, incommunicable, piercing silence with Him in intimacy? Or would you run off to call those wretched sinners to repentance one more time, because you see a need, and they are descending into hell by the droves? The need is never the call, the call comes only by One, the Lord Jesus Christ. And to set the trumpet to one's mouth requires first to be commanded to do so by that Son of Man Who is also the Son of God.

There can be no other way than to rest at the feet of God in irrevocable surrender to the Living Christ, watching, waiting, praying, loving, hoping, trusting, crying, travailing. This is the duty...Nay, the delight of a true watchman of God.

For Weeping and For Wailing

2006-07-16T23:00:00.000-07:00

From the northwestern most point of the contiguous 48 states of the United States of America let the word of the Lord Almighty go forth:

"I have cried, but will you weep? You have wept, but not for Me. How long O church will you leave Me in pain with your continual backsliding? O My bride, you have put yourself to pain, but for what gain? You have looked with wanton eyes upon strange things, searching for those unto whom you may give yourself. You have wandered so very far from Me, sold into iniquity, bought by the world for her lewd pleasures.

"Run, run, run away. Where will you run? To whom shall you turn? I alone have loved you before you were born. You were not born to die, for I the Living God have borne you from your mother's womb to be Mine. With tears in My eyes I cry. Yea I cry live! Learn from those who have forsaken Me, only to die alone, estranged, having gone after strangers.

Therefore, hear the word of the Lord Oh church of Jesus Christ. I stand upon the watchtower and declare what I have heard: "For your weeping and for your wailing I will trade you wings," says the Lord. "You will fly with Me above the heights, though you have sunken to the depths. You will walk with Me upon the high places. For I cast forth My net to take in a great catch, and there shall not be wanting any fish who has swam in living water.

"The alarm sounds. Judgment is coming. The trumpet resounds. Life in the Son shall be ever-abounding. For it is written as commanded by the Father of Lights, heaven's Great King Who marches forth to fight for His lost bride, and she shall be Mine.

"O saints converted to sinners return unto Me and I will restore comforts unto you. In striving and sin you have no rest. Come unto Me and you shall have peace. My church has broken the bond of My covenant and cast off the cords of My love. Her tabernacle has fallen. The stakes thereof have been removed. But I the Lord Jesus Christ declare the decree pronounced from eternity, for I am the Son, and with My Father one: all nations, tribes, and tongues shall serve Me. For I am building an holy house of habitation for My Father's glory. So shall it be. Amen."

Written on July 12, 2006 at 4:15 pm

The Dream of ETERNAL LIFE

2006-03-24T01:56:00.000-08:00

I have wondered at times, Where do we go from here? It's been a long time since we have seen God Almighty have His way so completely in a people that there is no thought of self-service. Rather, an expunging of all our precious possessions in order to follow the One Who alone is worthy. Oh the dreams God dreams over His church, His bride. They are fathomless to all but the ones most intimate with the Son of God. We have glimpses in the New Testament of the sweet, majestic splendor of Christ in all that the Father has purposed for the culmination of all things. However, it is a guaranteed revelation for no man, but only for those whose hearts beat and break for God's glory above all things. "He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given" (Matthew 13:11). But it is not only about what is to come some day far off. Eternity is to be the present experience of all the children of the Almighty, who have been made partakers of Christ, and by direct consequence, have been made partakers of Eternity in Him.

Eternal life...It is not so much a quantity of life, but a quality that is contained fully within the Godhead, revealed most dramatically in the life of Jesus Christ as He walked amidst the strangely commonplace things of life. With dust on His feet, sweat on His holy brow, in thirst, in sorrow, in wrath, and in weeping the Lord of creation exhibited one sublime truth in His brief thirty-plus years as a Man on the earth--Eternity, in the scheme of God, is intended to be compacted into the most drastically dull of days, transfiguring all actual circumstances by the sheer glory of His Presence. And we are to be seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, all the while manifesting His life and light in our daily treading of this world's dirt, walking as He walked (Ephesians 2:6 & 1John 2:6).

"I am the...Truth and the Life" A statement that seems so simple, yet contains in its few words the hope for all the broken, all the spiritually dead, all the dense individuals wise in their own sight. This is Reality, Jesus Christ Himself is REALITY. All else is but a vapor that comes and goes, created, and can therefore be removed by one word from His lips. But Himself, the Eternal God, He remains. And this is the life unto which every one of us is called.

Whenever we stand, or sit, or bow before the Lord Jesus Christ we face a moment of eternal consequence. He bids us come, and we appear before Him in a moment of crisis. Throughout the Gospels we see men and women who faced an everlastingly important decision in their contact with Christ the King of glory veiled in unimpressive human flesh (Isaiah 53:2). The word for judgement found in the New Testament is the word "krisis," from which our English word "crisis" derives. God's kingdom is an eternal expression of His nature, because He has ever, and will always, reign. His is the kingdom that became manifestly present at the arrival of God on earth as Man in the Son, but that is also yet to come at the end of all things when Jesus Christ returns. The ministry of the Son of Man on earth was two-fold: to give life and to execute judgement.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man" (John 5:25-27).

This is why we come to appear before the throne of His majesty in a moment of judgement (crisis); because we are brought face to face with the Ultimate Reality in Who He is. And each and every breath in our lives we are to live in the ever-present experience of intimacy with the Lord Who will one day send forth His voice to break open the graves of men, calling their lifeless bodies from the dust to appear before Him one final and decisive time for the commendation of a King to a faithful son or daughter, or to the condemnation of a bastard child. So we tread lightly each time this Holy One beckons, wanting only to look upon Him with love, with holiness, with a heart that overflows with the very love He has shed abroad in us by His Eternal Spirit.

All too often we dream of that which suits our own carnal desires for a life "well-lived," even attempting to justify such selfish ambition by arguing that these dreams are from God. However, we do so without regard for the claim of Jesus Christ over our lives, dismissing the priceless blood that bought us. Life takes on a new meaning, becoming an aim that is strangely temporal and foreign to the New Testament idea of Eternal Life. The Voice that once called so clearly, with an authentic authority that struck us with holy fear, becomes faint, fading into the background of the clamour and noise of voices inviting us to prosper at the expense of the only Abiding Reality this world has ever known. A new authority has taken control, one which is not new at all, but was the original idolatrous self-rule that characterizes every soul outside of the Son of God. A troubling majority of these so-called dreams originate in a pernicious lust for something grand for ourselves, as they are borne by the flesh which conceived them.

Therefore, the question is begged, What are you? The first thought that comes to mind in answer to this inquiry, what is it? Was it an answer that calls to mind your career, "I am a teacher," or "I am a doctor." Was it relational, "I am a mother," or possibly, "I am an husband." Maybe something much more elemental like, "I am a woman," or "I am a human being." The answer to the most fundamental meaning for life rests in how we respond to the above query. If we identify ourselves first and foremost with anything or anyone other than the Lord Jesus Christ, whether our careers or our families or by nature's most rudimentary facts, there is something or someone who dominates us more than He; which, by necessity, means that is He is not LORD over me. Thus, life's true meaning and intention, as set forth and established by God, is nullified, as each individual life is created by God for His glory alone. And Eternal Life is but an elusive shadow, a will-o'-the-wisp to the one who refuses to yield to the absolute Lordship of Christ. "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (Revelation 4:11). Moreover, Jesus Christ died and rose to life again in order to purchase for Himself "a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish," indeed a people who will love Him above all, no matter what the cost (Ephesians 5:27).

Moses turned to see why the bush did not consume, though it burned with a furious flame. Trembling, John turned to see the Voice of the One Who called as of a trumpet. Will you turn to see? Will you turn to hear? Or will you stand haughtily in your status quo, scoffing at reckless abandon to God the Almighty Father? Will you, too, cast your commonplace shoes from off your commonplace feet, and fall as dead at the Feet of Eternal Life Himself? Our true relationship to God in actual fact can be seen in our response to this simple question. Do we live for ourselves, waking with the thought of what we want to do with our day, rubbing the sleep out of our eyes only to rise and walk as one still asleep to the Call of God to Come Unto ME? Do we walk on as in darkness, with ambitions estranged from any relationship to true Reality in Christ, without the slightest vestige of remorse for the grief we cause the Holy Spirit by our unceasing spurning of His Voice in the details of life? Oh will you hear His Voice today? Will you hear God crying out from the very heart of heaven, and gaze into the midst of His flame, with a longing for Him to burn away every selfish aim and ambition, until He reigns sovereign over everything you are and do?

"And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. And the LORD spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only [ye heard] a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, [even] ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone" (Deuteronomy 4:11-13).

This alone is what it will be for those who enter into Eternal Life. Reality requires a holy disillusionment from all that we have given our lives to. And I am convinced that there is no other way than to come with the nothing that we truly have in our hands, and give ourselves over to God without respect for the cost. Because, dear child, it will cost everything. But isn't Jesus Christ worth it? Yes, a thousand times, YES! Yet you will need to decide for yourself; and the day-to-day drudgery of your life will serve to expose you for the faithful follower of the Father of Glory that you are, or regrettably, for the fraudulent fool who has convinced him or herself into believing that the title Christian and a half hour of reciting a list of wants to God a few times a week will suffice at the end of all things. Judgement is inevitable, for the sinner and for the saint. The difference being, the saint receives God's judgement on his sin now in desperate and willing identification with the Cross of Christ; whereas the sinner refuses any such momentary judgement, choosing rather to suffer such wrath as will be poured out without abatement for eternity, because he essentially says to God, "I am much more worth it than you. Please do not bother me any more with your calls for repentance or for prayer or for devotion. These things are all together impractical in the modern age in which I live."

Do you groan deep within for the changing of all things, for God's sovereign reign to be displayed in actuality, for mortality to be swallowed up by immortality, for eternity to do away with the seeming impertinence of the temporal and vain things of this earth? Or is the television too loud for you to hear His voice? Do you long forlornly for something, nay, SOMEONE, that will take you beyond your own little world and into an Eternal Reality that moves at the cadence of Heaven's heartbeat? Or is the pursuit for life, liberty, and happiness taking up too much of your time for you to bother with such things? In fact, maybe these are the high and lofty imaginations of one too busy dreaming to live life in the "real world." Tell that to Jacob. Have you seen the opened heavens? Have you seen the ladder leading from earth to heaven? Have you seen the Son of Man enthroned with an innumerable company of angels ascending and desceding upon Him? (see John 1:51)

Moses encountered God on the backside of the desert, as a shepherd of sheep forty years after he had left Egypt. Peering into the Fire he was too fearful to lift his eyes, lest he look upon God Himself. John beheld the unveiled Glory of the Resurrected and Exalted Christ in the land of exile, gazing upon the Eyes of God as they raged with a relentless flame. This beloved disciple who had rest upon the breast of the Son of God in human flesh now withers as a dead man at the same nail-pierced feet he had followed for over three years on the earth. And after years of selfish supplanting, Jacob found himself at the gate of heaven, indeed the very house of God, and knew it not until he dreamed God's dream for him. Any one of these three would readily delineate the dreadfulness and delight of the moment they saw the LORD, finding that Jesus Christ is in ultimate verity "the true God, and Eternal Life" (1John 5:20).

It is time to dream the dreams of God in Reality once again, most notably at the expense of our reputations before all "rational" men and women. It is time to turn to see and hear at the least breath of God's Voice, collapsing in view of the unspeakable Perfection of Beauty. It is time to face the judgement of God upon everything in our lives that is not of Him, that He will have in us a people upon whom He can write His Name in love, marking us for Himself a holy habitation of His Spirit.

ETERNAL LIFE, a qualitative intimacy evidenced in the smallest details of life, revealed in the sanctified soul abiding in Jesus Christ, thriving, breathing, living, loving, leaving everything else behind for the supreme delight of the KING of kings. "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). Oh, my Lord Jesus, dream Your dreams over us once again, purging from our lives everything that would cause us to live a farce of life feigned, drawing us nearer Your Majestic Footstool to bow broken and live with You in the Reality of Eternal LIFE.

the Harlot Church

2006-02-22T02:25:00.000-08:00

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.

To Know Him

2006-02-07T01:15:00.000-08:00

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.

Surrender

2005-08-10T01:12:00.000-07:00

I thought I would talk about something a little more personal this time. There are so many ways we in the church speak about following Jesus Christ. We speak about our spiritual walk, involvement in ministry, accountability, and so on. But I am wondering what this really has to do with surrender.

Surrender...an oft-mentioned word, but one whose meaning I think alludes even the most spiritual of us all. The reality and full import of this word is hitting home with me in a more real way than I have yet known. I remember approximately seven years ago, give or take, I said to a friend of mine, "I want to surrender completely to God." He replied solemnly, "Then get ready." I think of Jesus when He said to His disciples, "these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you" (John 16:4). Read the preceding verses. There were requirements of the disciples that they did not initially understand, costs that they did not originally take into account, because the Son of God to some degree withheld the full implications of discipleship, the all-out price of surrender.

I wonder if any of the disciples began to question whether they could possibly continue in faithfulness to God with such opposition of man, flesh, and the devil. But the undercurrent of confidence in Christ sustained them in the midst of such promises of impending suffering, rejection, and baleful foes. They knew there was no other for whom they lived or died any more. Jesus Christ had become everything to them, the One for Whom they had forsaken family, left all semblance of worldly sanity, cast away any surety of financial remuneration. There was no longer even a place whereupon they might lay their heads for a night of undisturbed rest. Home had taken on a new meaning. The faithful followers of the Son of God were at home wherever they were because they were with Jesus wherever He was.

I have no idea what tomorrow is going to hold for me. I have no job. I have no career, or any ambitions for one. I have no income. I have no wife. I have no lasting comfort of any kind in this world. Physical afflictions arise about which I can do nothing naturally. Loneliness is no longer a plausibility, but a guarantee. But my God, You are faithful. There are places and works in ministry I know God has called me to and spoken clearly of, but no finances, disobedience of men, and Satanic resistance have been consistent opposing influences. Does this mean that God has no control over the circumstances? God forbid that anyone would ever consider such a thing. Think of Paul in 1Thessalonians 2:18 "Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us." But praise be to God, His Word is never hindered! Oh how awesome is God Almighty in all of His sovereignty.

Oswald Chambers had it right when he spoke of the dance of circumstance. He said, "At times it appears as if God has not only forsaken His word, but has deliberately deceived us. We asked Him for a particular thing, or related ourselves to Him along a certain line, and expected that it would mean the fulness of blessing, and actually it has meant the opposite--upset, trouble and difficulty all around, and we are staggered, until we learn that by this very discipline God is bringing us to the place of entire abandonment to Himself" (Not Knowing Whither, The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers, 868).

Isn't that what it is all about--abandonment to God regardless of the outcome in my personal experience? Think about what happens when you surrender to your conqueror. Your hands go up, your knees hit the dirt as you plead for mercy, and you do whatever his whim and fancy beckon. Whether you look like his fellow or his fool is of no account, you are no longer in control. (See 1Corinthians 4:9-16). This, I suspect, is surrender to the true Conquering King. And so I go on with my Lord Jesus Christ, learning how to step into God's stride, carried into the all-encompassing compellings of God. What will tomorrow look like? I do not know. But any residual bitterness of surrender's cup is becoming sweeter as I drink it deep in communion with the Everlasting Lord, Who became the Servant of all that He might purchase me as His slave of love.

The Presence of God

2005-06-20T02:47:00.000-07:00

Much is said about the Presence of God in Christian circles today. We have heard more about this "presence" in recent years it seems. But what is the nature of that "presence" that is truly sought out? Or should it be rather stated, For whom is the presence sought out, and to what end is that presence coveted? Is it for the emotive experience of an anointing of sorts, or for some grand new revelation? How highly do we esteem God's Presence?

I was reading a short article entitled "Esteeming the Presence" about this topic on the website of Art Katz, www.benisrael.org, and the profundity of what God is revealing through His servant is significant and quite appropriate for the church. Katz says, "The kind of abiding consciousness of God is the province, I suspect, only of those whose whole life, purpose and reason for being is the Lord’s. Those who are yet independent entities with their own designs, however ‘spiritual’ and ‘consecrated’ will prefer a ‘presence’ to augment that spirituality and confirm them in their ‘dedication.’ Can it be that many of the spurious revivals of our time have given opportunity to the enemy to duplicate in the soul realm of the naïve and unsuspecting coveted experiences the result of which have neither fostered maturity nor been enduring? Better, I think, to have one’s secret life hid with God in Christ with that “pious mind that views all things in God and God in all things.” The one who is anxious to obtain the ‘presence’ risks haunting doubts about himself should he fail and forfeits the very peace where “the abiding companionship of God” [1] waits to be enjoyed."

It seems that we have spent a great deal of time talking about the presence of God, calling down that presence as if it were in some way extrinsic to God Himself. But this cannot be. Because the Presence of God is synonymous with God Himself--they cannot be separated. Imagine asking your dearest friend to give you their presence without themselves being present. It is foolishness. So why do we do this with God? This is what Moses most feared and interceded for on behalf of Israel, that God would not send His people into the promised land without His Presence; that is, without Himself going with them, thus annulling the only true and abiding distinction between the nation of Israel from all the pagan nations surrounding them. Who cares about attaining God's promises if God does not give His very Self in the midst of those promises?

But it is not about feeling the Presence of God, however gracious a gift this is when God chooses to grant it. I was in a prayer meeting recently and the congregation was singing a song, caught up in the emotion of the song itself. When the "worship" was over a pastor stood up and mentioned the awesomeness of God's Presence. And indeed, God's presence is awesome beyond description, but this was not what was referred to at the time. What was really being expressed was the emotion of singing a few words on the screen. Do we need to sing down God's presence? Do we need to work ourselves up into a state where the "presence" is felt? Or is the Presence of God infinitely more? The irony of this service was that immediately before entering the sanctuary God said, "This church is cold when she should have been hot." The word God had spoken was only confirmed when the same pastor stated that he had heard from God that there were those present who had grown cold in their relationships with God. What the pastor did not realize was that the word he received from God was the right word, but he had not allowed the Holy Spirit to fully penetrate his heart with His word, thus proving the spiritual condition of the church family as a whole, not just "a few in the crowd." If the word God had revealed were effectively brought forth, veracious repentance would have been fostered to the end that God would have received the glory He was seeking in that meeting. A friend of mine has referred to this as sermon syndrome--when a preacher will seek God only long enough to hear from God about what He is saying to His people, but does not allow the Father to fully penetrate his own heart with the full import of that word. Sadly, with this church, she has known to a great degree the manifest Presence of God. However, she has stepped into a place of disobedience where programs and plans of men have the preeminence, instead of the one thing that is required of her, that she watch and pray.

It is in situations like this where the marked contrast between a biblical meaning of God's Presence and the modern church's understanding of the "presence" is brought to the fore. The life hid with Christ in God is the only life worth living for the true saints of God. And in this secret place abiding under the insulating and ineffable shadow of God's Presence and Glory the saint can be free from seeking anything in particular from God, because they are there made partakers of Christ Himself. "For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end" (Hebrews 3:14). We would then learn that it is the redemptive work of that faithful and merciful High Priest Who ever lives to intercede that enables us to enter the very holy of holies, into God's unspeakable presence. "But this [man], because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:24-25).

Do we really esteem God's Presence, or is it a presence that we seek in order to declare God's ostensible stamp of approval on all that we say and do in our services? Whom are we serving in our church services? There is only one abiding reality and that is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He is present where two or three are gathered in His Name. But I venture to question whether we have really gathered in His Name. Think of those times in your spiritual life where things seemed to be inexorably dry, a barren land void of any water or solace from the heat and toil of long days in the sun's relentless rays. Is it not in such places that you learn to cry along with the psalmist, "O God, thou [art] my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; to see thy power and thy glory, so [as] I have seen thee in the sanctuary" (Psalm 63:1-2)? David learned to seek God for God alone. And the Psalms of David are the paragon of priestly ministry unto Yahweh for no other purpose than to satisfy His heart, resulting in prophetic adoration for the coming of the Ultimate High Priest and King (Psalm 110). David's greatest dread was not that God would revoke His gifts or calling of kingship from him, but that He would ever expel him from His Presence or take His Holy Spirit away from him (cf. Psalm 51). It took a man after God's own heart to truly comprehend the full magnitude of his indigence without God's Presence.

God so longs to do infinitely more than we settle for in our neat, compact church services. Our choruses, our sermons, our altar calls of a raised hand fall pitifully short of what God is truly seeking in His people. Jesus Christ wants a people who are utterly taken up into His Presence when He does manifest Himself to His own who love and obey Him. "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him" (John 14:21). In all actuality He will only make His manifest Presence known to those for whom it is a present delight and surprise, who are content not with a "presence" to augment their self-serving spirituality and make for better meetings, but with being a delight to the heart of God regardless of what they might get out of the deal.

"Shew me Thy way that I may know Thee," Moses pleaded with God (Exodus 33:12). Because the deepest longing of Moses heart was to know God, God could answer the cry, "Show me Thy Glory." And the day this promise was perfectly fulfilled was when Moses stood on the mount of Transfiguration with the Son of God, beholding the unveiled face of God manifest in the flesh. For, "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him...he that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:6-9; see also Matthew 17:1-9). In this secret place with the Lord Jesus His heart is satisfied all the time, and "the abiding consciousness of the life is to be God, not [my] thinking about Him" (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, June 2nd). It is here the true friends and companions of God are revealed, whose aim is not a "presence" to prop up their spiritual stature, but to be so perfectly one with Christ that He is ever present whether felt or not. And it will be far more accurate to say that the child of God is with the Lord Jesus where He is, rather than Christ being where they are (cf. John 12:26). Then and only then will the saints of God enter His endless peace, where Christ is the true Sabbath rest. "Lo, I am with you always," and "My presence shall go [with thee], and I will give thee rest" (Matthew 28:20, Exodus 33:14).

The Call of Every Christian

2005-04-22T19:49:00.000-07:00

Consider for a moment what it was like for Jeremiah the prophet, truly "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Isa. 53:3). A man who knew nothing but the tears of God falling profusely over a people who had forsaken the Fountain of Living Water, and hewed themselves out broken vessels that could hold no water whatsoever. Free-flowing tears from the eyes of God pouring through the tear ducts of His love-slave and spokesman. He so longed for them to see and understand the Deuteronomic call to the people of God. "Hear, O Israel...thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might"(Deut. 6:4-5). But love for God was perverted into lust for what they wanted from Him. And God's unfailing love cried out, "What iniquity have you found in Me, My people?" What faults will you find in God? To what will you point your fingers, accusing the Lord of all of failing? "Well, Jeremiah, it was better for us when we burned incense for and prayed to our idols, because we were prosperous. As a matter of fact, I used to be happy and filled and blessed and at rest when you weren't around with your messages of doom and gloom. Go away prophet of Yahweh!" (Cf. Jeremiah 44:15 ff.)

Healthy, wealthy, and fat with our own filth. Isn't that the way we want it? Oh, we would never say it. We would rather just live it, with a facade of Christianity that is attractive on the outside. But when the world wonders at us they draw near to smell the fragrance of the pretty flower that we purport to be, and we stink, we are a stench, we wreak with all the stuff that the world is so familiar with. We have our big buildings, our thriving groups, our popularity is on the rise, people like us. We have good music, great preaching, and a coffee stand to die for. And we are putrid with pride and a purpose estranged from the Living God.

"My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you..." (Gal. 4:14). But God will bottle the tears of those who travail over His church, weeping over a people who have loved to wander around, playing the harlot, going from house to whorehouse, from television screen to movie screen, from selfish motive to self-fulfillment. "After all, I am worth it, right? I deserve a little break from the round and round of devotion to Jesus Christ." Did the Son of God ever say seek first the kingdom of God, and then you can seek other stuff? You know, so long as God is first. God forbid it ever being so! He said, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt. 6:33). "You watch after your relationship with Me," said Jesus, "and I will see that every need is met in My way and in My time and for My Father's ultimate glory."

Maybe I just need to pray more about this thing or that thing, maybe that is why I cannot figure out what direction to take. Is that really it? Do we need to focus more on what we want God to do for us? Oh, child of God, do not seek Jesus Christ because you need to know where to turn, what college to go to, what job to take, what to major in, what man is to be your husband. Set your eyes to His throne, lift up your countenance to the Living God, bow down to the King of all majesty for no other reason than HE IS WORTHY! Fall at His feet and shut your mouth. "Be still, and know that I [am] God" (Ps. 46:10).

When was the last time you entered the courts of the Lord with adoration for Who He is, for all that He has done, climbing into the fullest memory of everything God has ever been to you? Have you ever been so in awe of God, so enraptured with His glory and the beauty of His holiness that you were utterly speechless? To speak at such a moment would almost constitute blasphemy, because your human language fails so miserably to fully express the worship in spirit and in truth that the Father so forlornly seeks. Would you dare to be silent in the Presence of the Eternal God, not uttering one word, until the Holy Spirit beckons you, and takes you into the true intercession and groanings of His heart for the church of Christ, for your family, for your city? Is He not the Spirit of grace and supplications? Does not the Eternal Spirit know the mind of God alone? He is the only One Who can reveal the Father's purpose and take us into true intimacy and communion with God.

Oh how we need to see that prayer is not for us to try to convince God of what we need, twisting His arm to conform to our plans, adjuring Him on the best course of action in any given situation. Prayer is seeking the face of Christ until you have His mind on the matter, true communion with the Almighty, desiring nothing else and nobody else more than that one thing that is needful--to sit at His feet, to gaze upon His beauty, to be one in whom He is well pleased. Vicarious intercession is what God is after in us--groaning, travailing, birthing prayer that knows the mind of Christ and is confident that whatsoever is asked of God is received, because it is His very will that is prayed. Oswald Chambers says that he defies any man or woman who is truly spiritual and abiding in Christ to ask anything that is not in perfect accord with God's will. Such an one offers petitions before the throne of God that are in absolute agreement with the foreordained decreees of God (Cf. 1John 5:14-15). "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus" (Heb. 10:19). What a gift it truly is to rest in God until hearing His voice is your soul's sole desire. Or maybe it is the grace of God's most intimate silence that He will grant you, to share in the secret of His heart, whether in sorrow or delight.

Have you ever been broken with the brokenness in God's heart for a people who want nothing from Him, just Him. Not a job, not a wife, not early retirement--Jesus Christ first, second, third. We get off on our own good ideas. Wouldn't it be nice to build a bigger building? Surely it is God's will for us to grow so big we do not even recognize that we are churning out half-hearted, ill-informed, scarcely saved men and women content to walk about the fringes of God's kingdom. Christian colleges are supposed to build strong Christian "leaders" who can influence the marketplace with integrity and an honest work ethic, right? Just don't ask whether their lives carry even the slightest fragrance of surrender. So long as we save souls. That's the business of the church, isn't it--to save souls?

Jesus Christ never commanded us to save souls, He commanded us to make disciples. The saving of souls is the job of the Holy Spirit, we are entrusted with the task of seeing that into the life of every born-again believer of Jesus Christ is brought the furnace of God's refining that purges every agenda and blemish and blot that would be worthy of censure in the light of God's ever-seeing eye. A man or woman is not truly a disciple until that one has been spoiled for every other goal in life than total reckless abandon to the Living Christ. "My goal is God Himself, not joy, nor peace, Nor even blessing, but Himself, my God: 'Tis His to lead me there, not mine, but His--'At any cost, dear Lord, by any road'"(Frances Brook, English hymnwriter).

What was Paul's first question to the disciples of Ephesus in Acts 19. "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" Not, "Did you join a Bible study? Have you been plugged in? Did you start tithing, because you know, that is the only way to ensure God blesses you." NO! "Have you received the Holy Spirit?" Oh God, grant that we might learn that the only thing that matters is that the Triune God comes and takes up His abode with the seal of His ownership in every vessel who names the Name of Christ (Cf. John 14:23). Our God is a consuming fire, and He is jealous for a people who are His alone (Ex. 34:14). What was the determined message of preparatory preaching for the coming of the Messiah by John the Baptist? "He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and [with] fire" (Matt. 3:11). Baptized, immersed, enveloped, filled with God the Eternal Spirit and the necessary ensuing flame of fire marking His presence and inscribing His Name upon the newly born son or daughter. "This man, this woman, is Mine and I will do with them whatever I like."

Have you ever learned the one simple truth that it is not about Where I am going, Why I am going there, or What do I get at the end of it all? It is Who is getting the glory out of my life, For whose pleasure am I living, and Who is the supreme love of my life? If the answer is not Jesus Christ, "Then," says Jesus, "you are not worthy of ME" (Cf. Matt. 10:37-38). And so soliloquizes the broken, suffering, beaten down, but inconquerable lover of God, the apostle Paul, "This one thing I do...I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13-14). Can you say this of your own life, or have you been deterred? Is the path broadening before you with the world increasingly in view? If so, flee with all the strength God has given you, and cast yourself at all costs upon the narrow way of the Worthy One. There is only one safe place for every saint of God to be found, and that is at His throne of grace. It is there that Jesus Christ unfolds His true call for you--that you would belong to God Almighty, to be His purchased possession. It is not so much that we are called to do this thing or that thing; we are called to Jesus Christ. Have you seen your calling?

There is none but Thee...

2005-04-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

But whoso wants God only and lets life go,
Seeks him with sorrow and pursues him far,
And finds him weeping, and in no long time
Again the High and Unapproachable
Evanishing escapeth, and that man
Forgets the life and struggle of the soul,
Falls from his hope, and dreams it was a dream.

Yet back again perforce with sorrow and
shame
Who once hath known him must return, nor long
Can cease from loving, nor endures alone
The dreadful interspace of dreams and day,
Once quick with God; nor is content as those
Who look into each other's eyes and seek
To find one strong enough to uphold the earth,
Or sweet enough to make it heaven: aha,
Whom seek they or whom find? for in all the
world
There is none but thee, my God, there is none
but thee.

by F.W.H. Meyers

The Work of a Warrior Bride of Christ

2005-04-10T20:35:00.000-07:00

Ephesians 6:10-18
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places]...Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints...

Will you also go away?

2005-03-23T00:57:00.000-08:00

John 6:67
Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?

There's a time that will come when all around you seems to fade away. The cost is far greater than when you first committed your life to Christ. What will you do when everything you ever hoped for collapses around you, when your dreams are taken, when your desires seem to be less than a memory? Will you go on? Where do you turn when there is nobody around who can hear you crying in the night? The tire blows on your car, the bank account is empty, there is no income, promises of God seem so far off, as if they will fail, people around you turn down their noses, words you have spoken from God's own mouth are ignored, sin has an ostensible hold that appears as if it will never let go. Forsaken by friend, mocked by family, and despised by foe you begin to wonder whether you are the biggest fraud you have ever known, whether your life is one big lie.

So many have responded to the hard words of Jesus and turned away, never to follow again; others are content to follow with a great distance between them and the Lord. Who will eat His flesh, who will drink His blood? Who will assimilate in the depths of their bowels and take into the untouched places of their souls the broken body and the life-blood of the Holy One, and be identified with His Father's will, whatever death it might mean? Only that you might be with Him. The Son of God has fired out the fools, freeing Himself of all who do not really want Him, only a natural kingdom with carnal ends. You stand there, just you and Almighty God in the flesh, peering eye to eye. You can scarcely look up at such holy beauty. There is such an intensity, an unspeakable passion, a desire burning within His eternal heart for the true "offspring" of His suffering (cf. Isaiah 53:10). And then it comes, the Lord's voice so precious, so priceless, so perfect..."Will you also go away?"

Then trembling, lest your words be cast off as a lie, you manage a cry more meaningful than ten thousand vows and resolutions, "Lord, where will I go? You alone have the words of eternal life. You are Eternal Life. I have given everything to You. I have no one else, I have nowhere else to go. I am lost to this world, but my Lord, my Love, I am found only in You...You are Everything to me." These are no longer just words. It is no longer some well-wishing statement, born from the husk of self-conscious individuality. It is the verity of your life, and Jesus Christ looks upon you with a knowledge of you infinitely deeper than your own, with a mercy and a love that dispels the deepest despair, saying, "Have not I chosen you?"

Discipleship

2005-02-19T03:20:00.000-08:00

Matthew 16:24
Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.

Have you ever heard this invitation from the Lord Himself, dwelling in the secret place with Him, whether under the open sky of God's creation, through the mouth of a humble soul surrendered to God, or shut up in a room somewhere in absolute solitude? This word can only come as you stand naked before the Son of God with your whole life laid bare at His feet, stripped of every pretense. There will only be one of two directions to take, the way of the world's plastic wonders and fascinations, a form of Christianity that can scarcely deliver one from hell, let alone anything else; or the Way of the unchanging Word of God. God will not present you with this supreme call at a time of religious excitement, when you are lost in the moment in some ecstasy, regardless of the spiritual veracity of such an experience. No, He will stand in all of His holy simplicity and solemnity and speak these awesome words, full of cost incalculable, while you calmly stand there with total control of all your faculties and powers of mind to make this decision. There will be no pleading on the part of Jesus Christ, no begging for you to just do what He asks, because "it will lead you to such fulfillment in your life." The initial attraction of Jesus has passed, when you once found Him such an intriguing figure, one to follow in the hopes that He would lead you to a better life of significance and purpose, full of happiness and peace and joy. The time has come to realize why He first chose you. Do not ever forget that fact, that He chose you, not the other way around (John 15:16).

It is a full-orbed call, one that encompasses every area of your life and holds them firm in the vise grip of God; because depending on your response, you will either relinquish every other call and desire that ever you had for yourself and in willing obedience, lay them at the feet of God Incarnate. Or you will turn away with grief and sorrow, because you have great possessions (cf. Mt. 19:16-22). Not necessarily possessions in a natural monetary sense, but possessions of family and friends, possessions of dreams and aspirations, things that possess you as you possess them. Or would you, could you, dare you be possessed by God Himself?

When Jesus Christ presented His disciples with this call it was in the context of the Suffering Servant revealing the true purpose for His coming to the earth, to suffer at the hands of the religious rulers of His day, to die on a cross, and to rise again to accomplish what no other man could ever accomplish--eternal redemption through His blood (Matt. 16:21-27). No wonder Paul says, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world" (Gal. 6:14). Our cross is not His Cross, ours is one of abandonment to God, for God alone, in identification with the purpose of Christ's death, that the Lamb that was slain may receive the rewards of His suffering. "Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand" (Isa. 53:10). Only in taking up our cross without equivocation and following His Son, even into the bowels of fire's fury if necessary, can God get glory and pleasure out of our lives.

Do not think that Jesus is here speaking of taking up your cross in the sense of not watching that rated "R" movie, or opting to wait until you are married for sex, or abating that nasty habit of cursing. This is a far deeper, an infinitely more meaningful statement that Christ makes. And a holiness that is none other than the holiness of Almighty God is the ineluctable result of such surrender, as you abide in the One Who alone is holy, working out the wonders of Christ's atonement that the Holy Spirit has worked in the deepest recesses of your being. This denying of oneself, this taking up of one's cross and following after the Lord Jesus can mean only one thing: give up every right and claim that you have for your life, and deliberately and irrevocably give it over to God. No strings attached. No saying, "Here's my life, but I still want a nice house someday." No contingency plan or 401K. No demand that says something like, "I want to be a history-maker." It is no longer your life, you belong to God now. This and only this can be discipleship, and Jesus Christ will never force any man or woman to make this decision, to yield himself or herself to the Eternal God without any account for the consequences. God can lift you into the heights of heaven's blessings or He can cast you into the depths of destruction, it matters not.

What will you say when Jesus Christ invites you, when the everlasting Lord bids you come, and promises you nothing in return, only that you will henceforth and forever be His bondservant, a slave of the King of kings? This will be the most important If ever presented to you. What will your answer be?

The Waters of God's Justice

2005-01-16T17:42:00.000-08:00

The word of the Lord Jesus Christ came to me on the ninth day of January in the year 2005, telling me to write these words.

The Lord of hosts has spoken, and this is the word that is declared unto me by the King of nations, the God of creation,
“I have uttered My judgments upon a people who did not know Me. A wave of sorrow has swept them away. Paradise has turned into a desolation and lands of plenty have been emptied of their inhabitants.

“Men have asked, “Why?” Women and children have cried. The fathers are drowned, and upon the children has the wave come down, sweeping them out of their mothers’ arms.

“Destruction, destruction, destruction upon the whole land. The earth quaked and the waters raged. The land is flooded. The bodies of men are scattered upon the open ground.”

This is what God has spoken concerning the killer wave that struck the nations on December 26, 2004, “The fathers have raised the children and taught them to follow after idols. The feet of the people have been swift to run after gods that are no gods. Where is Allah’s strength? Where is the enlightenment of Buddha? Where is the power and life force of Brahman? Their servants are dead. They could not deliver the people from the waters. Rivers have run in the streets. The people tried to flee, but were taken away, because their gods could not deliver them.

“I the Living God have judged the gods of the people in the land where darkness dwells. I am the Christ of Life. Come to Me, you who have remained. Let the orphans look to Me. Let the widows stretch out their hands to the only Savior. Come, come, come to Me and be saved,” says the Lord of heaven, the God of earth.

“Do not say, “It is because they were more wicked than me.” For a fool would speak such foolishness. I have stretched out My hands to a people raised in idolatry. Their gods have been judged by the waters of My justice. Turn, turn, turn to Me. Run, run, run and flee from the wrath to come. For I am the God of the nations and who can abide My indignation? If you do not repent, you will all likewise perish.

“Men have run to and fro seeking answers. To whom shall I speak that they may hear? Who will declare it that they may consider? Is the earth’s movement beyond My control? I tell you, No! By My word is the universe sustained. At My command the clouds drop down rain. This is no accident. It is not happenstance. I am purposeful in all My ways. From the beginning to the end I am the Ancient of Days.

“You who have suffered great loss I invite you to come and eat. Drink, yea, drink and be satisfied. Where you walk water of bitterness has swept through. But it is living water that I offer you. You have smelled the stench of death. Outside of your temples bodies lie lifeless. I invite you to come to My holy habitation, to My temple made without hands and live. Yea, I cry to you, live!

“All nations will see and tremble on My day. It will be a day of darkness and distress. The day of the Lord Jesus Christ will be a day of reckoning, and settling of accounts. At that day every knee will bow to Me and every tongue will confess to Me, that I am the Lord. Buddha is confounded; Brahman has passed away; and Allah is not! Where is the comfort; yea, where is the peace of Muhammad? Their prophets and their priests, their wise men and their monks are wind and confusion. My word is not in them,” declares the Son of God Who is the Word of God.

“This wave swept through one day after the world celebrated My birth. I am Emmanuel. But who will celebrate My return? Who is he who loves My appearing? To such an one will I grant My eternal life, for to know Me is eternal life indeed. For all who call upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered, and when I return to judgement your joy will be full in Me.

“I the Lord have come to you, Thailand and Indonesia; I have come to you, Sri Lanka and India; I have come to these nations to call a people who were not My people. The nations have been plowed that I might plant My word, even the good news of the kingdom of God. I the Lord do what is right; I work justice and judgement in the earth for My name’s sake. And I have caused My light to shine upon the darkness, that the blind may see and grope about no more. Through death and darkness shall spring the light of life.”

Biblical Salvation

2005-01-16T01:09:00.000-08:00

If when asked the question, How do you know you are saved?, you respond, "Because I now live right", what does this mean? This sort of response would make the Hindu ascetic, the Buddhist monk, and the devotee of Islaam partakers of your type of salvation. Salvation in the Biblical sense is not right living as such. Biblical salvation as purposed by God is none other than living and breathing the whole of one’s existence under the Supreme Head, Jesus Christ. “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ” (1Timothy 1:1). You cannot dichotomize the Lordship and Saviorhood of Jesus Christ--they are indivisible characteristics of His nature and His work in redemption. It is impossible to say, "Why, yes, I have accepted Christ as my personal Savior, but I have not quite made that step into receiving Him as Lord of my life." You are either saved unto God's ultimate and categorical reign in your life, or you are not saved at all, and the sentence of death and eternal wrath hang over you to this very hour.

God does not save a man or woman in order to place them on display to shine for a brief while until they collect dust while reveling in their own whiteness. The evidence of salvation in Jesus Christ is expressed in the irrevocable surrender of one’s life to God for God’s own desired end, whether destruction or blessing. Whatever tells for God’s highest glory is the mark of His Lordship and salvation in a man.

It is the religious fervor that denies the redemption of Jesus Christ that calls attention to its own accomplishments in living, whether by outright declaration or inward intention. Such a life only exemplifies the fact that the man doing such is more alive to himself than ever, and thus living for himself, and not for God. Conversely, it is the soul that has been united with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection that takes no account of the right actions, but only remains a servant of his Master, chained to Him as His prisoner of love, doing his Master’s bidding out of a pure heart. (See 1John 3:2-9). "So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do" (Luke 17:10). Oswald Chambers says that sin is not the enemy of God, it is our enemy. He then states that the enemy of God is a moral rectitude based on a denial of Jesus Christ. Any form of morality that is divorced from the Cross of Jesus Christ is not morality at all, but rather a stench before a righteous and holy God.

It is the disciple of Jesus Christ that is a living sacrifice. A dead sacrifice is one that examines its own degree of rightness and in an attempt to modify itself, thus conforms to a higher standard. This is behavior modification, and it is an idea as foreign to the New Testament idea of salvation as night is to day. A living sacrifice, on the other hand, will have been changed from the inside out, not by gazing upon his own deeds or misdeeds, attempting to alter his character through personal ambition and striving; but rather by beholding the face of Jesus Christ, and in so doing is transformed by the Holy Spirit into a completely different image, that of the Lord Himself (2Corinthians 3:16-17).

Man’s work will result in work for man, perpetuating an image of a god fashioned after the likeness of man. As a side note, this sort of right doing will also produce a righteousness that is not righteousness at all, because it has traveled through the filter of man’s corrupted sense of virtue, which virtue is vitiated because it is merely the remnants of what man used to be prior to the fall of Adam. Transformation via abiding in and looking upon Yahweh Tsidkenu (the Lord our Righteousness, see Jeremiah 23:6) will result in bringing glory to God by God’s Spirit working within man—God’s handiwork done by God’s hand. "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). This is done by the Lord Who is that Spirit. Ah, there is the wonder of it all—righteousness, redemption, liberty, salvation all under one Supreme Head, the Lord Jesus Christ!

To "Be" GOD's Will

2005-01-15T22:19:00.000-08:00

We speak of what we like to do for fun and what sorts of things we like to do for entertainment. Understandable. Before I knew Christ and immediately after being born from above I used to enjoy movies and certain television shows. But consider...Whose are we? To Whom do we belong? I have been learning this very recently myself. In discussing a particular activity and attempting to ascertain whether such is "okay" or "not okay" for a Christian to do, we miss the whole point. For some time I myself was caught up in the rational arguments presented, much of the time under the guise of theological and/or Biblical contention.

For example, "Well, there is nothing overtly wicked about it (e.g. nudity in a movie, getting drunk, etc.), so I can see no Biblical reason to refrain from the activity." Seems like a reasonable argument. But oh how it misses the wonderful simplicity of being a son or daughter of God, a true disciple of Jesus Christ.

A conversation I had with a friend involved the issue of Christians gambling. One man I knew said that just as some people set aside in their budget a certain amount of money for entertainment purposes, so he did; and his entertainment was to play cards with friends and bet (with the understanding that he would not outspend his allotted entertainment money). Sounds innocent enough.

But it misses one of the great freedoms and responsibilities of discipleship--namely that as a wholly devoted follower of the Son of God I am a living sacrifice. This means that I do nothing without the sovereign purpose of God for the absolute glory of God. Oswald Chambers says that as a child of God who is born again, you do not just do the will of God, "you are the will of God." And your freewill choices will be the foreordained decrees of God unless the Holy Spirit gives you a check, which you must heed immediately. Just think, as I abide in Christ, He perfects the Father's will in and through me in every situation and He engineers my every circumstance. But this cannot be the case if I would like to claim any particular entertainment or activity as my own, for which I have a natural inclination, and thus should be allowed to enjoy from time to time as long as there is "no Biblical injunction to the contrary."

"What, know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (1Cor. 6:19-20).

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Rom. 12:1-2).

It is not so much an issue of right or wrong. A Christian is not an automaton who is programmed with "convictions" in order to maintain a particular rule. The issue is the underlying purpose and passion of the heart of Christ as He walked this earth--His Father's will. "For I came down from heaven not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me" (John 6:38). "Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do Thy will, O God" (Heb. 10:7). As a disciple of Christ I can consecrate nothing to God but my right to myself. This alone will He receive that He might have His way in me. A living sacrifice indeed, "Be ye therfore followers of God, as dear children: and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour" (Eph. 5:1-2).

My Lord Jesus, may it truly be said of every one of us as You look upon us, "He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied..." (Isa. 53:11).