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SERMONS ON PASTOR’S PAGE—WWW.WOR.ORG
Copyright © 2006 Trumpet Ministries, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.
It seems that the understanding of God’s Kingdom, and also of the manner in which we are being fashioned by the Lord, is becoming increasingly clear. Perhaps these brief thoughts drawn from my sermons will be of help to the saints of the future.
Finding Our Safety in the Lord
The Day in Which We Are Living
The Last and Greatest Witness of the Church Age
Aspects of Our Preparation for Participation in the End-time Witness
The Character of the Victorious Saint
The Conditional Nature of Salvation
God's Vengeance on Evil Spirits
Attaining to the First Resurrection
The Three Stages of Redemption
Making Visible the Invisible God
The Coming Salvation/Redemption
What Comes After This Present Life?
What Are We Christians in America Facing in the Future?
The Goal, Nature, and Process of Resurrection
Preparing Young People for the Future
Six Aspects of the Kingdom of God
The Message of the Two Witnesses
The Disciple and the New Covenant
SERMONS ON PASTOR’S PAGE—WWW.WOR.ORG/PASTOR/PASTOR.HTM.
Introduction—Welcome to our site. You may notice some ideas that are new to you. Hopefully they will be helpful, or at least cause you to stop and think about what is being said.
We have come to the conclusion, after 60 years as a Christian, that some of our traditions need to be looked at again in the light of the Scripture. Our position is, if our tradition does not square with the Bible, then we need to change the tradition and not the Bible.
We certainly question the idea that our behavior does not affect our salvation, or that our salvation does not affect our behavior. Our salvation normally will be revealed in our behavior.
We question also the doctrine of the pre-tribulation "rapture."
The "prosperity" and "faith" messages do not fit the Scripture, as far as we are concerned.
We look for the coming of the Kingdom of God to the earth, rather than eternal residence in Heaven. Have you ever tried to find in the Bible where we are supposed to spend eternity in Heaven?
We want to be with Jesus where He is—in the center of the Person and will of God, not stuck in an unscriptural mansion somewhere.
The Gospel of the Kingdom is beginning to be preached in all the world for a witness. After that, the end of the Church Age will be here.
Finding Our Safety in the Lord—Finding Our Safety in the Lord. As I prayed carefully before the service this Sunday morning, I kept "seeing" war! war! war! As I began to prepare the morning sermon, Psalms 91 came to mind immediately; then, the sixth chapter of the Book of Ephesians where it speaks about putting on the whole armor of God. I felt God wanted me to tell the people to prepare themselves in the Lord because perilous times are on the way.
(1/1/2006) Audrey and I have been pastoring Mount Zion Fellowship in Poway for thirty years. Throughout that time I have been saying that revival is coming to the United States in the midst of trouble. This has been a consistent burden.
I think I may be able to modify this a bit. It appears to me now that the revival will be in the form of calling a remnant of God’s people to participate in the spiritual fulfillments of the Blowing of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement. These are the fifth and sixth celebrations of the seven feasts of the Lord.
Participation in these two convocations will causes us to turn to the Lord Jesus and cooperate with His Spirit as He removes the various aspects of the sinful nature that dwell in us. While these acts of redemption are taking place, there will be all sorts of chaos and calamities in our environment.
Psalms 91 promises us protection during the perilous times. However, such protection depends on our dwelling continually in the shelter of the Most High, that is, in the Lord Jesus Christ. When we are living in Christ, trouble cannot touch us except as ordered by the Lord for our change into His image.
How do we abide in Christ? We think about Him continually throughout the day and night. This is quite difficult in America because of the frantic rush to acquire material goods. We are exhausted because of the anxieties of life caused by our worship of money. We find it difficult to stand before the Son of Man.
We are to be speaking to the Lord and listening to Him continually. How are we to do this when we are so rushed by the demands our job makes on us? We ask the Lord to give us the strength and time each day to abide in Him. He always will answer this prayer, but we must do what He shows us.
No matter how chaotic our environment becomes, no matter how great the danger that surrounds us, we will be kept safe, walking with the Lord Jesus on our high places of joy.
We live near a nuclear installation. Some day the terrorists may blow it up. If we do, the fallout may surround us. What do we do then? Do we rush about in distraction because of our fear for our children? Not at all. We wait on the Lord to see what He would have us do in order to save ourselves and others who depend on us.
The Spirit of prophecy seems to be telling us to prepare ourselves to stand in the time of evil. We are not to be careless. We are to do everything in our power to make certain our loved ones are guarded in Christ. Everything—all relationships, circumstances, and things—must be placed on the altar so that if any of them are destroyed we know God will keep safe for us all that is of true value.
Many believers are going through very difficult times in the present hour. This is to prepare them for what is ahead. If they learn to trust God today, then in the future they will save themselves and those who hear them.
At night I stressed standing resolutely in Christ. We are to put on the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness. The breastplate of righteousness is not that of an imputed, legal sort of righteousness, but kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, honesty, freedom from malice. The greatest need of the hour is for Christians who interact with Christ until their behavior is righteous. This breastplate will protect them from the onslaught of the enemy.
The evening message is on cassette tape, and can be obtained from Mount Zion Fellowship.
The Lord bless and keep you and your loved ones as you serve Him.
You may hear the sermon at listen.
Victory Over Sin—In 1948 while in Bible school I received the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Soon after this, the Lord spoke to me that the next move after Pentecost would be the judgment of the Church. He associated this with the sixth of the feasts of the Lord, the Day of Atonement. I asked an elder at that time, Brother Oliver Ellenwood, if he thought it was the Lord who spoke to me. As I remember, he seemed to think it was, although I believe he did not understand what I thought I heard any more than I did. I had been saved for about three years so I had no idea what was meant by the judgment of the Church, or what the Day of Atonement was all about.
(1/8/2005) I have been studying the Bible, and preaching off and on, since 1948. I have learned a lot about the spiritual fulfillment of the Day of Atonement. Also, some understanding of the judgment that is coming upon the Church has been given to me.
Recently I have been reading and thinking about the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation ("Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490-1700. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Penguin Books, 2004).
It appears there was no small discussion, among the theologians of that period, concerning the role righteous behavior plays in our salvation. The idea that no law governs Christians (antinomianism) was considered, and then rejected.
Finally a model emerged:
Man is hopelessly corrupt.
Man is obligated to keep the moral law of God.
Man should make every effort to keep the moral law of God.
Man’s efforts to behave righteously always end in defeat.
Therefore man is admitted to Heaven on the basis of grace (forgiveness.
When I came to Christ, while in the United States Marine Corps, this is what I was taught. I received it without question.
Over the last 58 years I have noticed that the above model seems to prevail in numerous Evangelical churches. I have noticed also that it makes no provision for actually overcoming sin.
When I was reading MacCulloch’s book a couple of nights ago, it became clear to me that the above model is unscriptural. It also is impractical.
When we tell someone he ought to live righteously, and then tell him he will fail, he will not make much progress. It would be as though a general ordered men into battle, telling them at the same time they were going to be defeated; or telling a long-distance runner there is no finish line. It is a formula for failure.
Now the question arises, what does the New Testament tell us about overcoming sin while living in the present world? Does the New Testament inform us that we ought to try to do good, but that it is impossible? Or does the New Testament tell us that if we are to inherit the Kingdom of God we must, through Christ, overcome sin?
One can see at a glance how important this question is.
The New Testament declares in several passages that if we are to inherit the Kingdom of God we must overcome the works of our sinful nature. The Apostle Paul, while urging us to gain victory over sin, informs us that if we do not, we shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.
The New Testament teaches without hesitation that Jesus Christ came to earth to deliver us from sin—not only from the guilt of sin but also from the power of sin; the desire to sin; the compulsion to sin.
Here are a few passages in support of what I have just stated:
John 8:34,35.
Romans 6:15-22.
Romans 8:12,13.
I John 3:4-10 (Please note this passage carefully. It reveals how unscriptural the Reformation model is.).
Galatians 5:19-21.
Ephesians 5:1-5.
Colossians 3:5.
I John 1:9.
I Corinthians 15:34.
Daniel 9:24 prophesies of the time when God puts an end to sin.
Matthew 13:40-43 says that at the end of the age, all sin will be removed from the Kingdom. I submit that this removal will apply with equal force to deceased believers in the spirit world and those alive upon the earth, and, furthermore, that this great day of salvation from sin has begun.
I remember how people used to tarry for the baptism with the Spirit. We had to have faith that it was in the Bible, and then we had to persevere until we received it.
Now we are moving past Pentecost to the Day of Atonement. God will begin to show you the forces in your life that are not godly, not in the image of Jesus Christ.
When God reveals to you the ungodly desires in you, confess them clearly to God. Denounce them as unclean. Renounce them, asking the Lord to remove them totally from your personality. You will find after that, that their power is greatly weakened and you can gain the upper hand over them.
Remember, for the program of judgment (on unclean spirits) and deliverance to be effective you must be denying yourself, taking your cross, and following the Lord Jesus at all times. If you do not, the unclean desires will return in greater number, because you have provided an empty house for them.
Ours is the day when both the tares of sin and the wheat of Christ are coming to maturity. God wants to tear out the tares and increase the Presence of Christ in us.
It is a step-by-step entrance into the Fullness of God, into our inheritance.
What I have just written has been proven in my own life and in the lives of many others. We are not speaking of some foolish sinless perfection fantasy, but of a patient war against the acts of the sinful nature. Check out Romans 8:13. If we as a Christian live according to the actions of our sinful nature we will die spiritually. If, on the other hand, we through the Holy Spirit put these desires to death, we will live. We will attain to complete readiness for the resurrection, the redemption of our mortal body, when Christ appears.
The time is now. The Day of Redemption has begun. Ask the Lord Jesus Christ if what I have written is true. If He says yes, then listen to the Spirit; for He will lead you to complete victory over all filthiness of the flesh and spirit.
You may hear the sermon at listen.
Building God’ s House. The burden for Sunday was very clear. Usually I do not get the morning message (or the evening either, for that matter) until an hour before the service. But from Tuesday of the preceding week I knew that God wanted to emphasize the building of the eternal House of God, which is Christ—Head and Body.
(1/15/2006) In 1948 the Lord gave me three burdens that correspond to the last three feasts of the Lord. The last three feasts are, the Blowing of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the feast of Tabernacles. The three burdens are, war and vengeance against Satan; reconciliation to God until we are in God’s image in every detail of our personality; and finally the coming of the Father and the Son to dwell in That (Christ) which has been created in us.
The text was John 14:1-24. In this passage the Lord Jesus informs us that God has a house, and in that house are to be many rooms. The Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal dwelling place of God. We are being made rooms in that great house of God.
The fact that God has created us to be His dwelling place means that we have to be crucified with Christ. Every part of our personality must die, so to speak, and be raised again in Christ if is to be suitable as a habitation of God.
In America we have what are called "fixer-uppers." These are houses that have been allowed to deteriorate. If a person is willing, he or she can buy a fixer-upper for a lesser price than would be true if the house were in excellent condition. Then the new owner can fix up the house according to his or her desires.
So it is with us. We are fixer-uppers. However, in our case the old house has to be demolished and a new one constructed from the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When you think of it this way we realize that God’s way of saving us is to crucify us. Flesh and blood cannot possibly enter the Kingdom of God.
God slays us by putting us in situations that are unpleasant, and keeping us there for many years sometimes. Also, He denies us our most intense desires. If we are willing to wait patiently for the Lord, He resurrects the things, circumstances, and relationships that ultimately will bring us love, joy, and peace. They then are our possession for eternity.
To be a genuine Christian is to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Christ at all times. There is no other kind of true Christian. The rest merely are members of the Christian religion.
Does God need a house in which to live and express Himself? Both the Old and New Testaments state clearly that He does. What His temple in Heaven is like we do not know. But we do know that the Lord Jesus is the Chief Cornerstone as well as the Capstone of the new house that God is building. We also are living stones in God’s house if we cooperate with the Holy Spirit as Christ is formed in us.
If we are willing to obey the commands of Christ and His Apostles, Christ will be formed in us. Then the day will arrive when the Persons of Christ and the Father come and dwell in the new room of the eternal habitation of God.
When the eternal Tabernacle of God has been completed it will come down through the new sky and be established forever upon the new earth. This is the Bride of the Lamb, the glorified Christian Church. This is the new Jerusalem. All the creation of God will be governed for eternity from the new Jerusalem. The saints who compose the new Jerusalem will see the very Face of God—an unheard of privilege.
Therefore let us patiently work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We are being built as a habitation for the living God. He knows how He wants each room furnished, just as we do when we buy a fixer-upper. This means that we must listen to Jesus day and night so we are able to submit to and cooperate with the changes God desires to make in us.
But think of the blessing we will be to our loved ones and the remainder of the creation when our thoughts, words, and actions reflect the Person, way, will, and eternal purpose of God in Christ! This pure witness of God is true of Christ. This pure witness of Christ is to be true of us. Then—and only then—the world will believe that God has sent Christ and loves His holy ones as He loves Christ.
You may hear the sermon at listen.
Salvation Is a Pregnancy. The burden for Sunday had to do with the birth of Christ in us. Satan is determined to devour the Child the moment it is born. Satan does not fear any kind of Christian program. But when a believer is willing to set aside his or her life that Christ may be born, it is then Hell trembles!
(1/22/2006) We are considering the events described in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation, the account of the birth of the male Son and the casting down of Satan and his angels to the earth.
Now, here is an important fact to consider: Notice, in Revelation 12:12, that after Satan had been overcome and cast down to the earth, a woe is pronounced on the earth and the sea because "the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short." This means the overcoming of Satan and the hurling down of him and his angels will take place BEFORE CHRIST RETURNS.
But when will this triumphant victory take place? At the end of the Church Age, just before the return of Christ from Heaven. What time are we in now? Perhaps most of us would agree that we now are close to the end of the Church Age.
If in the present hour it is true we are moving toward the end of the Church Age, if this indeed is true, then it follows that now is the time for Satan and his angels to be hurled down to the earth.
Notice that his army of angels are hurled down. A few verses previously we note that "his tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky." These stars obviously are not the entire company of angels that will be hurled down to the earth. Rather, these are the stars of God—the saints who had been in Christ at the right hand of God.
Rebellion was found in the host, according to the Book of Daniel.
What do we see today? We see pastors and members of their congregations, who at one time had been in Christ at the right hand of God, now watching pornography on the Internet. They have lost their place with God and now are feeding on the filth of the earth. "Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall"! They can recover their place if they will sternly repent and cast themselves on the mercy of God. Remember David and Bathsheba!
If it is time for Satan and his angels to be hurled to the earth, and if it is the "brothers" who overcome the accusations of Satan, thus enabling Michael and his angels to drive Satan and his angels from the heaven, by what means do the brothers overcome the fiery dragon?
By the blood of the Lamb.
By the word of their testimony.
By loving not their life to the point of death.
To conquer by the blood of the Lamb means our sins have been forgiven by the atonement made by the Lamb on the cross. It means also that we have been fed with the blood of the Lamb to the point that His resurrection has been created in us.
To conquer by the word of our testimony means that our thinking, our speaking, and our actions have all been brought into line with the Word of God.
To conquer by loving not our life to the point of death means we have turned aside from our own desires, hopes, plans, ambitions, and now speak and act only in accordance with what we are hearing from Jesus. "We" are "living" no longer. Christ is living in us.
Now—today—we have the opportunity to overcome the fiery dragon so that the conflict of the ages, evil against good, will be brought to the desired conclusion. The church will crush the head of the serpent, as has been prophesied from the beginning. The Kingdom of God, the doing of God’s will shall be done in the earth.
The Lord Jesus told us that many who are last in time shall be first in the Kingdom of God. It is as though all who have gone before us have established base camps on the way to the summit. Now the summit is in site; the fullness of God; the gaining of the nations and the farthest reaches of the earth for our possession, in that we are coheirs with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today is the day of our visitation. It is a time of the most extraordinary opportunity and the most extraordinary spiritual danger. Many will fall because of the maturing of wickedness. Opportunity to satisfy the lusts of our flesh and soul abound. Only the most dedicated will survive to stand before the Son of Man. But these shall shine as the stars forever and ever.
The opportunity to gain the throne is unprecedented. The opportunity to fall into the cesspool of moral filth is unprecedented.
What are you going to choose?
At night we continued the discussion of the birth of the male son. The Christian salvation is not a religion, it is a pregnancy. The central idea is that Christ, the male Son, the ruler of the creation of God, is to be born in us.
When Christ has been formed in us, we then are the flesh made the eternal Word, the covenant of man with God. We are the one Seed of Abraham through whom the nations shall be blessed. We are members of the one body, the Head of which is Jesus Christ. We share that priestly anointing. We are an integral part of Him whom God has chosen to fill all in all; to sum up all things in the heavens and upon the earth.
God is not saving us, He is crucifying us. He is slaying us so that the only true, eternal Life may be brought forth. All else of our personality and life is so much temporary garbage. It is Christ alone who Himself is the Kingdom of God.
We become the Kingdom of God when He has been brought forth and has ascended to the One who has made Him the Cornerstone and the Capstone of all there is. Then He, and we who are part of Him, shall be subject to the One whose infinite wisdom and power has planned all things from the beginning, that God may be All and in all.
You may hear the sermon at listen.
The Day in Which We Are Living. I believe the Lord wanted us to review the tenth chapter of the Book of Revelation. Actually, the tenth and eleventh chapter should be considered one chapter. When the eleventh chapter, which concludes with the return of Christ to set up His Kingdom on the earth, speaks of the "Two Witnesses, it is referring to the commission given to the Apostle John (who represents the victorious saints) in the tenth chapter.
(1/29/2006) How excited I was to receive a book from our Foursquare president, Dr. Jack Hayford, titled God’ Promise and the Future of Israel, by Don Finto. Pastor Jack spoke highly of this book, telling us pastors it is next in importance to the Bible as portraying the future. You may listen to my excitement at listen, Tape 6304. The book tells of the place of Israel in God’s Kingdom. The emphasis is on the return of Jesus Christ to establish His Kingdom on the earth. This has been my own emphasis over the past thirty or so years.
Of particular interest to me is Dr. Finto’s view of the "rapture." Instead of being a fleeing of the believers to Heaven to escape trouble, the "rapture" is a going forth of the victorious saints to meet Christ and return with Him as He establishes the Kingdom of God on the earth.
I believe this to be the case, and all the concern about pre-trib, mid-trib, and post-trib is misdirected. The real issue is whether one views the fourth chapter of the Book of First Thessalonians as referring to a removal of the believers to Heaven, or the return of Christ to rule on the earth from the city of Jerusalem.
It is so uplifting to me to realize that the leader of our denomination, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, is endorsing a book containing the viewpoint that we are waiting for our soon-coming King, not a soon-going church.
It is time we return to the original Gospel of the Kingdom of God. For hundreds of years the idea of salvation is that we are to make our eternal home in Heaven. This is not at all scriptural. There is no basis for the concept of making our home in Heaven to be found in the Old or New Testaments. The Hebrew Prophets, John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus, and the Apostles of the Lamb, all taught concerning the coming of the Kingdom of God to the earth.
It is no wonder that the churches are drying up, as Andrew Strom points out so passionately, when the sheep are being fed the unscriptural "grace-rapture-Heaven" error.
God’s people are hungry for the truth concerning the coming of the Kingdom to the earth, and the role of Israel in God’s plan. We certainly can suggest with confidence that we all read "God’s Promise and the Future of Israel, by Don Finto, a Regal publication.
As I said, the tenth and eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation are a description of the time in which we are living.
There is a powerful angel governing this period.
There shall be delay no longer. The mystery of the Gospel, Christ in us, will become increasingly meaningful to us as God places the Capstone on His house.
Perfect power, the seven thunders, will be withheld from us until the people at the Altar of Incense have been measured. It is at this place, which we arrive at after Pentecost, after the Lampstand to speak in a figure, that we cry out, "Not my will but Yours be done!"
We cannot receive the power necessary to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom to every nation as a witness until we die to our self-will. Both the world and the Christian churches are filled with self-will; personal ambition including spiritual ambition. We do not always move according to the will of the Head. We do not deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. Therefore Divine power is withheld from us.
God’s will, His witness, for the last days is a little scroll. We do not merely read this scroll, we have to eat it. When we eat the scroll we begin to realize that all the proud works of the flesh of man shall be cast out of the Kingdom. The Lord alone shall be exalted in that Day.
After the saints have been measured and delivered from worldliness, sin, and self-will, they shall be given the means to bear witness of the Kingdom of God to the whole world. This witness shall be accompanied by unprecedented Divine power. It shall be given before Christ returns.
This may not be what we envision when we think of a "revival," but rather a powerful announcement of the soon coming of the Kingdom of God to the earth in order that people may have a chance to believe and be baptized. The witness will be accompanied by works of destruction until the ends of the earth realize that Almighty God is present and speaking!
The "two lampstands" refer to the Head and Body of Christ.
The "two olive trees" reveal the limitless anointing that will rest on God’s witnesses.
When the witness has been concluded to God’s satisfaction, God will withdraw the witness and Antichrist shall rule for a season.
When the world is crying "peace and safety," under the Antichrist government, the Lord Jesus shall return. It will be earth’s darkest hour. Then the Glory of the Lord shall be seen upon the saints on the earth and upon the saints who return with the Lord Jesus Christ to take up their bodies from the places of interment.
At this time will occur the worldwide revival we always have hoped for but is not possible during the Church Age. The Church Age has included the work of converting people to belief in Christ; but its main purpose has been that of bringing the members of the Body of Christ to the stature of the fullness of Christ—as our Lord prayed to the Father: "I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours."
The last trumpet, the seventh trumpet, shall be blown. The kingdoms of the world will become the Kingdom of our God and of His Anointed.
We now are in the period when the seventh angel is about to sound. The Holy Spirit is inviting us to cooperate with Him as He removes the sin from our nature and brings Christ to maturity in us.
Our problem today is one of distraction. The crushing weight of information coming through the various media distracts us with worldly opportunities. Then we do not take the time to ask the angel for the scroll so we can eat it and become part of the last-day witness of the Kingdom of God.
The hour of our visitation is here. Will we keep before Christ constantly so we do not miss His perfect will for us? Or will we play with the toys of the world, which may seem important today but will sidetrack us until we miss what God has for us?
Each one of us must make our choice now; for the spiritual pressures, both righteous and wicked, are so enormous that unless we take a determined stance to follow Christ in strict discipleship we shall default to the power of evil.
You may hear the sermon at listen.
The Image of God. You know, it is difficult to sum up the topics mentioned during the two services on Sunday. The topics include: the image of God; the witness; the two witnesses; making disciples, the Lampstand; the end-time revival. All of these were mentioned as we discussed the tenth and eleventh chapters of the Book of Revelation.
(2/5/2006) Perhaps I should discuss the concepts in the order I have just stated, since they all are connected.
First, the image of God. In the beginning God declared that man is to be in His image and likeness. We are to be in His image in our moral character. We finally are to be in His outer likeness when we are raised from the dead and clothed with a body like that of the Lord Jesus.
Obviously we have to be changed into God’s image in our moral character before we will be entrusted with a body like that of Jesus Christ.
What a momentous hour we are living in! Prior to this time the emphasis has been on imputed righteousness, that is, a righteousness assigned to us independently of how bound we are with sin. All the righteousness most of us have known is a de jure righteousness, a righteousness assigned to us because of our faith in the blood atonement made by the Lord Jesus.
If we think about it we soon will come to the conclusion that a righteousness ascribed to us while we are unchanged in character is not satisfying. It is not what is meant by being made in God’s image. There shall come a day, according to the New Testament, when the Lord will give us a de facto righteousness, a moral transformation that will cause us to keep, by nature, God’s eternal moral law. Maybe we never thought that our salvation would include actual deliverance from sin, as well as forgiveness while we yet are sinning.
But Christ came to destroy the works of the devil, not to forgive the works of the devil.
We have experienced the fullness of the Divine redemption, that which was purchased by the blood of Christ on the cross, when all that is of Satan has been removed from us; Christ has been formed in us; the Father and the Son are residing in us; and we have been raised from the dead and clothed with incorruptible resurrection life.
Can God actually make us in His image? Yes, He can.
The reconciling of us to God in our personality is prefigured in the two goats of the Jewish Day of Atonement. One goat provided forgiveness of sin. The second goat portrayed the removal of sin. Both were goats of atonement. This is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. We now are experiencing the spiritual fulfillment of Yom Kippur.
The Holy Spirit is using circumstances and people to provoke us so all that is not of the image of God in our personality is revealed. And example of this would be a critical spirit. When we see that we have a critical spirit we are to confess this to God as not being of His image, and then firmly denounce it, asking Christ to remove it from our personality and put His Spirit in its place.
And so on and on until all that is not of the image of God has been removed from us and replaced with Christ. If we are utterly diligent in following the Holy Spirit in this matter, we will reap the image of God a hundredfold.
We have to have faith that God is able to make us in His image and we have not been condemned to be unlike Him in our personality.
By the way, going to Heaven will not cause us to suddenly appear in the image of God. We cannot find the image of God by going to another place; only by interacting on a day by day basis with the Lord Jesus. It is He who transforms us, not our environment.
Then we spoke of what it means to be a witness. There only is one Witness of God: the Lord Jesus Christ. We can bear witness only to the extent that Christ has been formed in us and is living His Life in us. We can talk about the Witness, about Christ, but Christ Himself is the eternal Witness of God.
In the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation we read about the two witnesses. The two witnesses are Christ—Head and Body. The two olive trees indicate that during the end-time revival, God’s saints, and Christ working in them and with them, will be anointed with a double portion of God’s Spirit. We shall be endued with power from on High so we can bear witness to the ends of the earth.
The first verse of Chapter Eleven refers to the measuring of God’s elect. This measuring, or judging, is the spiritual fulfillment of the Day of Atonement. Its purpose is to prepare us to present the last great witness, as described in the last verse of Chapter Ten.
The Bible says that before the end comes, the Gospel of the Kingdom of God shall be preached in all the world for a witness. This last great witness of the coming of the Kingdom of God to the earth shall be provided by the Head and Body of Christ—Christ in and with His saints.
The Lampstand is Christ, the Light of the world. Now, in our day, as the Spirit of God begins to unwrap the graveclothes from us, we shall be the Light of the world because the only true Light of the world is being formed in us and we are reflecting His Divine Glory.
As we go into all the world and make disciples, we must be able to say, "Follow me as I follow Christ." Words alone will not be sufficient to bear the last witness. We will have to be the testimony, the covenant of God with man. People must be able to see Christ in us. Also, God will entrust us with miracles as signs of His Presence. But miracles apart from a transformed, obedient, cross-carrying personality is the False Prophet.
We can make disciples of all nations only as Christ is revealed in our words and actions. There is much "Christian ministry" in America today. But the witness, the testimony, has been destroyed because of the worldliness, lust, and self-seeking of the so-called "ministry."
The Lampstand (not candlestick!) of God is Christ, as set forth in the fourth chapter of the Book of Zechariah. The Lampstand is solid gold, representing Divinity. But at that time there was only one Lampstand.
During the two thousand years of the Church Era, the second Lampstand, the Body of Christ, has been created.
When God is satisfied that Christ has been formed in us sufficiently, we will be anointed with a double portion of His Spirit. Then shall come to pass the saying: "not by might nor by power but by My Spirit, says the Lord." The Capstone shall be put on the Temple. The mystery of God, Christ in us, shall be completed. All shall be accomplished by the Spirit of God, not by human endeavor.
As far as the end-time witness, the great harvest rain of the Spirit, is concerned, please consider the following: "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." (Matthew 24:14—NIV)
The Gospel of the Kingdom: hidden for two thousand years, and now being revealed.
In the whole world: no peoples, nations, languages, or kings will be omitted, as set forth in the last verse of Chapter Ten of the Book of Revelation.
As a testimony: a clear revelation of the Person, way, and will of God, and His eternal purpose in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The end will come: the end of the Church Age and the beginning of the thousand-year Kingdom Age.
What a time in which to live! God is ready to make man in His image, through Christ.
Surely the Lord Jesus has kept the best wine until now!
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Self-will and Presumption. It may be true that in all of past Christian history, there never has been, except for a few outstanding exceptions, anywhere near the amount of knowledge that is true today. Some of the current topics, such as the Body of Christ, the gifts and ministries of the Spirit, the coming of the Kingdom of God to the earth, were not, it seems to me, in the possession of the average believer.
However, while the opportunity to reach the fullness possible in Christ is present in our time, there is a corresponding danger. The danger is that of self-will and presumption in the things of Christ.
I have been teaching for years that the Charismatic churches will be split on this issue: are we to go forth with our knowledge and gifts and attempt to build the Church and save the world now?; or are we to return to Christ and wait until He reveals His plan to us each day and obey what He shows us?
Anyone who thinks it is easy to do nothing until one hears from the Lord, when the majority of leaders and people are crying "sons of God, march forward," has never tried it. We end up appearing as an impractical "loser" who ought to rise up and "do something for Christ." I settled the question for myself many years ago. If Christ does not make a move, I am dead in the water, as they say.
Well, are the sons of God to march forward, or are they to return and wait for Christ to show us what to do and enable us to do what He is commanding?
I am not speaking of passivity but of a dynamic looking to Christ every day and every night until we know what we are doing. The Old Testament gives us Abraham as an example of the chaos wrought by not seeking to fulfill the promise until God’s time.
What would Church history have been like if none of the Christians took a major step until he or she heard from the Lord? Would anything have been accomplished in the Kingdom?
Notice:
Then the word of the LORD came to me: "The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this temple; his hands will also complete it. Then you will know the LORD Almighty has sent me to you." (Zechariah 4:8,9). At this point, Zerubbabel represents the Lord Jesus Christ.
What about it? Will Christ complete the eternal Temple of God or won’t He? Is it our responsibility to go out and build, using our common sense, or are we to wait on Christ so He is able to use us to build His Church by His own wisdom and power? Did Christ say or did He not that He shall build His Church? An extremely important question in our day, given the spiritual knowledge available to us.
(2/12/2006) I have been speaking about the two witnesses, the sixth such set of two witnesses from the time of Adam and Eve. Each of God’s set of two witnesses heralds a new day in God’s working with mankind; the new day will come forth from the witnesses, just as the day of physical form came from Adam and Eve; and the new day will last for eternity. People always will look like people, no matter how glorified; for man is destined to be in the likeness of God.
Then I compared the words of one of the old hymns with what we hear today. What do we hear today?
We are to command the Holy Spirit.
We are to take spiritual dominion over geographic areas.
We are to command the angels.
We are to march forward and "take the world for Christ."
We are to control our circumstances by faith.
We are to speak the creative word.
We are to use our gifts to "save and lost and dying world."
We are to step forth and walk on the water before the Lord bids us come.
We are to look to the Christ in us rather than the Christ at the right of the Father.
The old hymn I chose is "Living for Jesus." Think about the chorus, and compare it with the self-will and presumption in the attitude of today:
"O Jesus, Lord and Savior, I give myself to Thee, for Thou, in Thy atonement, didst give Thyself for me;
"I own no other Master, my Heart shall be Thy throne. My life I give, henceforth to live, O Christ, for Thee alone."
Do you see any difference in the sentiment expressed in "Living for Jesus," as compared with today’s self-willed, presumptuous attitude.
I do! I see a great difference. I see the difference between the "old paths," wherein we are to find rest, and the False Prophet.
What do I mean by the False Prophet? I means Christians who will support Antichrist in the last days. Why will they support Antichrist? Because the False Prophet will have the power of the Lamb (the two horns of the Lamb), but will speak with the voice of the dragon.
What is the voice of the dragon? It is! I will! I will! I will! I will be like the Most High! I will set my throne above the stars of God!
Who is the False Prophet unless it is the believer who is seeking the power of the Lamb but is not walking behind the Lamb in cross-carrying obedience?
After speaking about the seven sets of two witnesses, and the current self-will and presumption (jump off the roof; the angels will bear you up in their hands), I held forth with might and main about the need for each of us to make the following declaration to the Lord Jesus Christ: "As You give me the grace, I will do Your perfect, complete will each moment of each day and night." This declaration must be made verbally and determinedly.
For centuries Satan has told God’s people that no one can do His will perfectly and completely. This monstrous lie has held the believers in guilt and confusion. It is Satan who is never satisfied with our behavior. God’s commandments are not grievous. They are entirely doable when we keep coming to the Mercy Seat for assistance.
Any attitude on the part of the Christian other than that of doing God’s will perfectly and completely is unacceptable. It is rebellion against the only valid will in the universe.
You and I, with all our imperfections, passions, and fears, indeed can do God’s will perfectly; and we are expected to do so.
If you care to do so, declare your determination to God. You will find out that all God requires of you is made possible by Divine wisdom and power so you can walk joyfully before the Lord.
Certainly there are times of severe testing. The people of the world also pass through severe crises. But for those of us who look to Christ, the testing proves to be another step in conforming us to His image and bringing us into untroubled rest in the Person and will of God.
Although I cannot go into it right now (you can read an explanation at here), the present period of time in which we are living may be the preparation for the sixth of the great days of God’s plan for mankind. As such, we can expect from now on the emphasis to be that of making us in God’s image in character, and, at the return of the Lord, in God’s likeness.
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The Last and Greatest Witness of the Church Age. The fourth chapter of the Book of Zechariah is the source of Revelation, Chapter Eleven. There is only one Lampstand, in Zechariah. There are two Lampstands in the eleventh chapter of Revelation. The second Lampstand, which as I see it, consists of the saints in whom Christ, the Lampstand of God, has come to maturity. The two olive trees speak of the double portion of the Spirit (Elijah plus Elisha) that will be poured out on the saints who have prepared themselves.
(2/19/2006) In the present hour we are in a period of preparation, of measurement, as set forth in Revelation 11:1. We are being prepared to give the greatest witness of history, the Gospel of the coming Kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit is revealing to us the sins and frailties that are in us—everything in our personality that is not in the image of God—and helping us renounce them in Jesus’ name. The Holy Spirit also is forming Christ in us, for Christ is the true Lampstand.
The angel told Zechariah the meaning of the Lampstand. The meaning is this: "Not by might nor by power but by My Spirit, says the Lord."
What is it that is not by the ability of man but only by the Spirit of God? It is the building of the eternal Temple of God.
Zechariah was prophesying during the period that the Temple was being restored, after it had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The angel was saying that the Temple will not be perfected by the ability of man but by the Spirit of God.
This is, of course, a prophecy of the last days of the Christian Era. Both the Old Testament and the New reveal that Christ will suddenly come to maturity in His saints. The mystery of the Gospel shall be accomplished. The mystery of the Gospel is Christ in us, the hope of glory. For two thousand years the Christian churches have emphasized Christ with us. The emphasis of the Spirit now is Christ in us.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the chief Cornerstone of the eternal House of God, the Tabernacle that one day will come down from Heaven and be installed on the new earth. In that day Heaven will be on the earth. This is the hope of the Glory that depends on Christ being formed in us—not the Christ of history, but the Christ who is being formed in us in the present hour.
Jesus Christ is also the Capstone that holds the Temple of God together.
The two olive trees are the Anointed Ones who stand before the Lord of the earth. They are, I believe, Elijah and Elisha. Their spirit will come down upon the saints of the last days, just as John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah. The coming anointing of the Spirit will be without measure, as signified by the olive branches pouring their oil directly into the cup of the Lampstand so that there is no need for the High Priest to replenish the oil every twenty-four hours, as in the case of the Tabernacle of the Congregation.
Our Lord said that the Gospel of the Kingdom, that which He and John held forth, will be preached to every nation for a witness. For a witness! The world today needs to be confronted with a true witness of the Person, will, way, and eternal purpose of God in Jesus Christ. We have a great deal of preaching in our time, especially in America. But the witness too often is that of self-serving preachers and denominations.
The nations need to see God. This will happen in the future, but only as those with whom God is dealing today are willing to forsake their sins and frailties and their self-will.
The witness will not be given by fancy preachers in expensive clothes. It is a sackcloth revival.
Perhaps the most important issue that confronts the saints in our day is that of self-will. It is a simple matter to receive the blood atonement, receive eternal life, be filled with the Spirit of God, preach, speak in tongues, prophecy, heal the sick, and still be moved by self-will. It happens all the time in the Christian churches.
Can we cast out self-will like we can the demons that drive our flesh? No, although we can ask God to remove our self-will. When we do, God permits Satan to throw us into some kind of prison. There we must remain, patiently waiting for God to bring us forth.
We must humble ourselves, as did the Lord Jesus, not viewing our state as sons of God something to be grasped. We must become nothing, waiting for the promise, not kindling our own sparks. We have the lesson of Ishmael to consider!
We are not to lay our hand on the Ark of God. The Divine Glory is coming down the road today. We are to be rejoicing and praising the Lord. But that vehicle brings judgment; and so we must purify ourselves of all filthiness of the flesh and Spirit, as the Holy Spirit enables us.
We are in a time of tremendous spiritual opportunity. The very thrones that govern the universe are waiting for those who will overcome, through Christ, all that seeks to distract them from the single-minded pursuit of the heavenly calling.
We are in a time of tremendous spiritual danger. The False Prophet is being fashioned as believers seek to do great things in the name of Jesus, desiring to administer the things of the Spirit rather than waiting on the Lord for direction in every detail of life and ministry.
Will Jesus be able to find any who care enough to turn away from the vibrant culture of America and seek to live in the Presence of Christ throughout each day and night? I hope so, for only these are qualified to be transformed and to be caught up to meet the Commander-in-Chief in the air, and to return with Him to install the Kingdom of God on the earth.
Many are called but few are chosen. You can be one of the chosen. But you must, like Peter and the others, resolve to remain with Christ when the majority of believers continue with their casual approach to Christ and His salvation.
At night I emphasized again and again that whoever would desire to be a part of the end-time witness must turn away from all sexual lust, especially the Internet. Those believers who look at pornography on the Internet must resign themselves to the fact that they will not remain at the right hand of God in Christ but will be pulled down to earth by the tail of the Dragon. They are not preparing themselves to bear witness of the coming Kingdom of God
The evening message can be obtained by sending for the tape. Please contact Mount Zion Fellowship for this. We are hoping to soon be able to point you to a Sunday-evening tape on the Audio page.
We have this one opportunity to be one of God’s stars. Let’s you I and go for it!
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Aspects of Our Preparation for Participation in the End-time Witness. From our point of view, the two witnesses of the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation portray the final witness of the coming of the Kingdom of God. The witnesses are Christ and His Saints, who will be endued with a double portion of the Spirit of God. Perhaps every true Christian wants to be a part of this witness; but there are conditions we must meet if we are to participate in the witness; and then pressures that must be overcome if we are to stand spiritually during the reign of Antichrist, which will follow the unprecedented witness.
And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:14)
(2/26/2006) The last witness of the coming of the Kingdom of God will be a "sackcloth" revival. The current Christian "ministry" sometimes appears in a showy fashion, wearing expensive clothes. This no longer is acceptable.
What must be stressed, if we hope to be part of the last witness, that which may be closer at hand than we realize, is that the Holy Spirit is seeking those who will listen to Him as He deals with the worldliness, lust, and self-will in our personality. If we are not willing to obey the Spirit as He guides and enables us to throw off all that is not of God in our personality, we have no hope of being a part of the "two-witness" testimony.
There is a period of time spoken of by Bible scholars as Daniel’s seventieth week. The clock stopped ticking when Christ came to the earth. It soon will be ticking again.
There shall be a prophetic week. The first half of the week will be occupied with the great end-time witness, empowered by the harvest rain of the Spirit. The second half of the week will see Antichrist governing the cities of the earth. The godly remnant, according to my understanding, will be driven to wilderness areas. There they will be joined by the elect of the Jews who were told to flee by the Lord Jesus when they see the abomination that makes desolate.
The abomination that makes desolate consists, as I see it, of a statue of a man standing on the roof of a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, where Christ stood during His third temptation. Also, Antichrist himself will sit on the Seat of Reconciliation in the Temple.
Perhaps, in his presumption and personal ambition, Antichrist will leap from the roof of the Temple and be miraculously kept from injury, thus proving he is greater then Christ (meanwhile declaring that Christ was afraid to jump). I think I see the hand of the False Prophet in this. The False Prophet is composed of miracle-working Christians who are not patiently bearing their cross and looking to Jesus for everything. Remember, it is the False Prophet who give breath to the image of the Beast, to the image of Antichrist.
How can we keep from being deceived when these awesome events take place? Only by denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus.
When the witness has been given to God’s satisfaction, the special anointing will be lifted. Then Antichrist will be able to overcome the testimony. The testimony concerning the coming of the Kingdom of God will be driven from the cities of the earth.
The most significant aspect of Antichrist is self-rule, self-will. Self-rule, as distinguished from Christ’s rule, is admired in America today. Even Christians have "got to be me." This is the opposite of God’s will for us, which is to place Christ on the throne of our heart.
But Antichrist will in the future emphasize the value of self-will. He himself will be the most complete example of self-will. He will have a charming appearance; but the fires of Hell burn in his soul.
Some of those who bore the anointing will flee into wilderness areas, as I have stated. Christ, the Ruler of the age to come, will be brought to maturity in them. The birth of Christ in His saints is described in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation.
After Christ has decided that Antichrist has had a full opportunity to reveal to Heaven and earth the fruit of Satan’s personality, He shall return. The elect Gentiles and elect Jews shall be transformed at His coming. They will join together with the witnesses of all time, beginning with Abel, who will return with Jesus and take back their bodies from the grave.
However, some who bore the Divine testimony will yield to the abundance of sin, just as today many Christian pastors, and members of their congregation, are watching pornography on the Internet. They will be removed from their position at the right hand of God in Christ and thrown to the earth.
Yet others will be tortured and slain because they will not obey Antichrist as he works with the leaders of the churches to feed the poor, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and perform other works of social benefit. The majority of the "believers" in the church will not realize the Holy Spirit has departed and that the Christian institutions, which once had been the habitation of the Spirit of God, are now "dead bodies."
It will be just as Anna and Simeon recognized Christ, while the remainder of the Jews in the Temple were going about their religious duties.
The godly remnant will flee; the indecisive will yield to the flattery of Antichrist; the remainder will be tortured and killed. Thus the testimony will no longer be present in the cities of the earth. Only in Mount Zion, in the godly remnant in the wilderness, will there be salvation.
Of all the millions of believers who attend a Christian church in our day, there seem to be just a few who are listening to hear what the Lord Jesus is saying. They are confessing and turning away from their worldliness, lusts, and self-will.
They also are preparing themselves for the persecution and martyrdom that shall follow the great witness of the Kingdom of God. They have placed their families on the altar of God and will give up everything they treasure rather than deny Christ in any manner.
There is a godly remnant today. They can hear the Spirit of God. You too can be one of them. But you will have to seek the Lord with all your heart. The American culture is no friend of the true saint. It is one long Siren call to lure us to destruction.
Only the most determined will escape being destroyed by the present distractions. But their rewards in the Kingdom are unimaginable in the present hour.
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The Kingdom of the World. An error has existed in Christian thinking from ancient times. It is that man’s eternal home is Heaven, that is, in the spirit world. It is true that our citizenship is in Heaven. We have been born from Heaven and our Father, Christ, the holy angels, and the saints are there. But Heaven is not our eternal home. The earth, first the present earth, and then the new earth, is our eternal home. We were not created in Heaven. We were created on the earth, and this is our proper dwelling. Satan and the fallen angels have no right to be here.
(3/5/2006) Christians for so long have regarded Heaven, the spirit Paradise, as being their destiny and their eternal home, that it may take the next fifty years before we understand that while our salvation comes from Heaven, our home is the earth. The time we spend in the spirit world after our physical death is temporary. And we actually know very little about it, in spite of the multitude of our myths and traditions. The Bible largely is silent on this topic.
The purpose of the resurrection is not, as supposed commonly, to bring us to Heaven. The purpose of the resurrection is to give us back our physical (although spiritualized in some manner) body so we can live once again on the earth. This idea seems to confuse God’s people, although had we never been taught to the contrary, it would appear to be both scriptural and logical.
The reason our transition from Heaven-thinking to earth-thinking indeed shall take place is that we are drawing near to the Lord’s return from Heaven. He is not returning to bring His Church to Heaven (from what passage of Scripture did we derive this notion?). The purpose for the Lord’s return from Heaven is that He might install His Kingdom on the earth. Since that event is certain, it also is certain that before too long we will be thinking of our place in the Kingdom of God on the earth, as we prepare our minds and hearts for the coming of the Lord.
Although I have been teaching for years that the goal of salvation is change into the image of Christ, and dwelling in untroubled rest in the center of God’s Person and will, and that this change in us is has nothing to do with where we are but what we have become in Christ, I was stirred anew on Sunday as we considered Revelation 11:15:
The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever."
Think of it! The kingdom of the world. Not the kingdom of Heaven, but the kingdom of the world.
What is the kingdom of the world? It is the world of today. The spirit of the world is one spirit, the spirit of Satan. The kingdom of Satan includes every nation on earth, from the greatest down to the smallest. All is pervaded with the spirit of Satan. He is the ruler of the authority of the air.
Where is Satan’s kingdom, the kingdom of the world, located? It is located on the earth.
What is going to happen to Satan’s kingdom, the kingdom of the world?
The kingdom of the world shall become the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Christ and His victorious saints.
I cannot emphasize this fact enough. Our destiny is not the spirit Heaven. Our destiny is eternal life in the Kingdom of God on this earth, and on the new earth when it comes down from Heaven.
Will we be able to move back and forth from the spirit world to the physical, material world? Undoubtedly, yes, depending on where our service to God directs us.
Can we look forward to going to Heaven when we die? Yes, and we ought to place our affections on things above, not on things in the world. But we must come to understand that what our life will be like after we die and are in the spirit world is not known to us. The Lord Jesus has told me many times that while I am free to imagine what will happen to me when I die, I actually have no idea of what my circumstances when I enter the next life.
The Lord Jesus exhorted us to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. This we are to do. "His righteousness" includes the righteousness ascribed to us when we turn from the works of the Law of Moses and place our faith in Christ. But "His righteousness refers primarily to the righteousness of personality formed in us as we follow the Spirit of God.
The Kingdom of God has two dimensions. The first dimension has to do with what we are experiencing now, on the earth. The second dimension has to do with the awful descent of Christ with His saints and angels at His appearing.
There appears to be a tendency today to ignore the awful descent of Christ to establish His Kingdom on the earth, and to stress that we are entering the Kingdom today as we seek to practice righteousness. This is a weak approach, because our motivation for seeking to practice righteousness today is greatly enhanced by the knowledge that the Lord shall appear and with violence set up His Kingdom on the earth.
We begin our entrance into the Kingdom of God when we are born again. After that we establish our life in the Kingdom of God as we follow the Holy Spirit in putting to death the deeds of our sinful nature. There is no sin in the Kingdom of God, and we cannot continue in the Kingdom while we are yielding to the lusts and passions of our flesh and carnal mind.
As long as we are following the Spirit of God in confessing and renouncing the deeds of our sinful nature, the Passover blood of the cross is shielding us from the judgment of God.
But when we are not following the Spirit of God in confessing and renouncing the deeds of our sinful nature, the Passover blood of the cross is not shielding us from the judgment of God. Those who continue in the deeds of their sinful nature shall reap corruption and have no place in the Kingdom of God.
The vision of the coming of the Kingdom of God, the doing of God’s will, into the earth, is far superior to the vision of living forever in the spirit Paradise.
Paradise was on the earth in the beginning. Because of man’s disobedience, God withdrew Paradise into the spirit world. Paradise is destined to return to the earth at the hands of Christ and His saints. They shall govern the present earth, and then the new earth, at their appearing. Disobedience to God shall be driven from the earth forever.
In that Day we will have no desire to remain confined to the spirit world.
We do not realize it, but we actually have no desire to live among creatures with four faces, or to stand beside a sea of glass laced with fire. What we truly desire is an earth from which all distressing aspects have been removed. This is what is on the horizon. Give this some thought and determine what you actually desire.
But God is not willing to give Paradise back to man until God is certain that man will not lose it again through disobedience. Therefore the history of the world has been for the purpose of teaching angels and humans the folly of following Satan, and also for the purpose of developing rulers who will be faithful to God and govern the world according to the laws of righteousness, the laws which are God’s Character.
The rulers of the world to come are being prepared now. Perhaps God is dealing sternly with you in the present hour. Your life has been interrupted and all your plans and hope seem to have been wrecked beyond repair. Do not quit. Do not curse God. Wait patiently while He examines your soul. You will emerge in triumph if you do not give up in despair. Keep trusting the Lord. Your are being prepared to govern the new world of righteousness.
At night we considered the ordeals that some of our members are experiencing. These can be very severe. But we are not to regard our fiery trials as strange. They are the normal part of our discipleship, as we change from knowing only the house of God to knowing the God of the house of God.
Toward the end of the evening study I explained the following passage:
Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm. (Revelation 11:19)
After the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the only temple God is interested in is Christ and those who are part of Christ. In Christ and each saint must be the three articles contained in the Ark of the Covenant: the stone tables of the Covenant, the memorial jar of manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded.
When the Lord Jesus appears with His victorious saints, at the revealing of the sons of God, the living Temple, which always is in Heaven at the right hand of God, shall be opened. The peoples of the earth will see those whom God loves as He loves Jesus Christ, His Firstborn son.
These saints will show within themselves the eternal moral law of God (the Ten Commandments, the eternal covenant of God with man); the memorial jar of manna (the members of the governing priesthood who live by the Word proceeding from the mouth of God); and transformed believers who abide faithfully in their calling, never seeking to usurp the pace of another in the Kingdom (Aaron’s rod that budded).
When the peoples of the earth behold such believers, they will understand that it is God who has sent Jesus Christ to the earth, and who loves the saints as He loves Christ.
Their descendants will be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the LORD has blessed. (Isaiah 61:9)
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The Character of the Victorious Saint. We focused this morning on Revelation 11:19: "Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm." You might think of this as a somewhat abstract passage, not related to our daily behavior at the present time, when the believers are having so many "practical" problems. The truth is, the passage above provides the reason for our tribulations.
3/12/2006) Notice the three major elements in the passage: the opening of God’s Temple in Heaven; the Ark of His Covenant; and the rumblings, peals of thunder and so forth.
The purpose of the lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder is to draw our attention to the other two elements, God’s Temple and the Ark of the Covenant. When I say something significant during my sermon I like to have Sandi bang on the cymbals to show that I have quit talking and now am going to say something.
First let me point out that God’s Temple is the Church. God created man to be His living Temple (Check out Ephesians 4:21.)
I realize it says "God’s Temple in Heaven." This is because God’s Temple always is in Heaven. When the Lord Jesus was on earth He also was at the right hand of the Father in Heaven. When we are in Christ we also are at the right hand of the Father. Our new born-again nature is now in Christ at the right hand of God. Heaven is not a far distant place. Heaven is another dimension that we enter at physical death, not a far-off land that people can visit in a spacecraft! The Bible says we already have come to Mount Zion.
After the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, God is not interested any longer in a temple that shuts Him off from His creatures. Christ is the living Temple of God, and each true Christian is a room in that living Temple. Thus God through us can bless people and give them eternal life. In fact, Christ, who Himself is the Tree of Life, is making us trees of life, provided we are learning to live by His body and blood.
The Temple is opened and what is seen is the Ark of the Covenant. Since Christ rose from the dead, the Ark of the Covenant is just a gold-covered box. The Lord Jesus Christ, and those in whom He is being formed, are the true, eternal Ark of the Covenant.
In case you are wondering if it is true that God no longer has use for a gold-covered box, or if His Throne is to be located in His people rather than far away somewhere, let’s hear what Jeremiah says:
In those days, when your numbers have increased greatly in the land," declares the LORD, "men will no longer say, ‘The ark of the covenant of the LORD.’ It will never enter their minds or be remembered; it will not be missed, nor will another one be made. At that time they will call Jerusalem The Throne of the LORD, and all nations will gather in Jerusalem to honor the name of the LORD. No longer will they follow the stubbornness of their evil hearts. (Jeremiah 3:16,17—NIV)
What is this? Jerusalem is to be God’s Throne? The Ark of the Covenant will be forgotten and not missed? Hey, I didn’t say this. Jeremiah did!
So we see Jeremiah’s prophecy fulfilled when the kingdom of the world becomes the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.
Actually, I believe our passage is referring to the revealing of the sons of God, an event that will take place when Christ returns to earth with His victorious saints to establish His Kingdom by force.
Didn’t the Lord say that when we are one in Him and the Father the world would believe that it is the Father who has sent Christ to us? Didn’t the Apostle Paul write that the material creation is eagerly waiting for the sons of God to be revealed?
Thus we can state that the opening of God’s Temple and the revealing of the Ark of the Covenant is referring symbolically to the time when Christ appears and we appear with Him.
But before we can occupy the role of the Ark of the Covenant, Jesus Christ must work certain changes in our character.
The changes are symbolized by the three articles placed in the Ark of the Covenant: the golden jar of manna; Aaron’s rod that budded, and finally, and most importantly the two tables of stone, the Ten Commandments, God’s righteous covenant with man.
The reason we have tribulation while we are in the world, as Jesus warned us, is that tribulation is necessary if the jar of manna, Aaron’s rod, and the righteous covenant are to be formed in our character.
The battles you are having each day, if you are living as a victorious saint, have to do with the manna, Aaron’s rod, and the Divine covenant of righteousness.
The manna in us means that we are being compelled to trust God each day for our survival and safety. We like to hedge ourselves against disaster as much as we are able. Finally God sweeps away all our protection and we are forced to look to Him alone for daily health, safety, and survival. Has this happened to you? Probably!
The expression "the just shall live by faith," which often is used to mean we do not have to live righteously, just believe correct doctrine, actually means the righteous live by trusting God rather than their own resources. Check it out. the expression appears four times in the Bible.
Aaron’s rod that budded is found in the 16th and 17th chapters of Numbers. The message is that God chooses who is holy; who he is drawing to Himself.
There is so much envy in the churches! Christ was not murdered by the Jews or the Romans. Christ was murdered by the spirit of envy in the rulers of Israel who were spiritually ambitious.
If we are to accept patiently the role God has assigned to us, and be content with the circumstances in which God places us, we must be free from the desire to be preeminent in the Kingdom. We are going to see ordinary people ("no better than we are!") exalted to positions of unbelievable glory, authority, and power. We will see them chosen by the Lord, while we ourselves can only look at such majesty.
Here comes the royal parade. Some of your acquaintances are in the front chariot with the Lord Jesus. An angel hands you a shovel and tells you to clean up behind the horses.
How do you feel about this? Is there a little twinge maybe? Take it to the Lord and tell Him to just give you a broom and you will sweep up manure while you are singing praises in the Spirit.
I’m not kidding! We have to get this religious envy out of us. Pilate realized that the leaders of Israel had murdered Christ out of envy.
And now we come to the most important aspect of our character, and that is righteous behavior. When the Ark of the Covenant was moved from David’s city of Zion to Solomon’s newly constructed Temple, there was no golden jar of manna in the Ark. There was no stick that had buds, blossoms, and almonds. There was only the stone tablets on which were written the Ten Commandments.
What does this fact tell us? It informs us that after the game has been played to the end, and the new Jerusalem has descended to the earth. what remains is righteousness. Righteous behavior is of total importance in the Kingdom of God.
A grievous error has entered Christian thinking. It is that God has given us grace as an alternative to righteous behavior. Any intelligent person who reads Paul’s writings carefully can see at once that such a definition of Divine grace is totally opposite to God’s intention under the new covenant.
I wonder how long it will be before Christian leaders decide that Paul was arguing against the works of the Law of Moses, not against righteous behavior. We have destroyed the testimony of the Christian churches by our teaching that since grace has come, we enter Heaven by professing faith in Christ rather than by interacting with the living Jesus until we become a new creation of righteous behavior.
The fruit of the maturing of the born-again experience is a character in the moral image of the Lord Jesus Christ. God wants righteous behavior on the part of all people. God demands righteous behavior, and when He doesn’t get it, judgment soon follows.
Righteous behavior is possible only as we have power. Other religions may teach righteous behavior, but they cannot furnish the power. The power to live righteously comes only from the Divine Life that flows from the Lord Jesus, from nowhere else!
So we see that Revelation 11:19 has practical application to what happened to us last week and what will happen to us this coming week. We will respond to our tribulations by interacting with the Lord Jesus, or we will groan about how we are being treated unjustly and continue interacting with the American culture.
Do you, as a Christian, choose to die spiritually? Then ignore Jesus and pursue money and pleasure.
Do you choose to live spiritually? Then pay attention to the Lord. He is dealing with you. He wants you to live, to enlist His help until you are making righteous choices.
The choice is before you, Christian believer. Will you choose death or life?
You can hear the sermon at listen.
You can hear the evening sermon at evening. After Wednesday, click on the bottom link of the middle column. The right column includes the links to Stan Josephsen and Edward Reiter.
The Warrior’s Prayer. The Scripture passage of interest today is Psalms 18. I call it "The Warrior’s Prayer. It is an excellent text to dwell on when we are in deep trouble.
(3/19/2006) As I prayed in my office this morning, Psalms 18 came to mind. I believe the last time I preached on this psalm was about two years ago.
As I pored over some of the familiar passages, I received the distinct impression that God was telling us to prepare for the future—that many of us will be going through deep waters indeed, and not to panic when we find ourselves in distressing circumstances.
The key to survival in our time of ordeal is to trust in the Lord as our strength. It is not just that He gives us strength, He Himself is our Strength, our Rock. We look to Him alone to bring us out of deep water.
As Christians we do not go through many crises such as David is describing here. We have our day to day problems, and always enough grace to keep our joy in the Lord.
But when God decides to make Himself known to us personally, we may find that all we have trusted in has been swept away. When we enter such a Gethsemane experience, we find we no longer have victorious faith. We are brought down to a naked trust in God’s faithfulness that we once again will see the light of day.
Then we are to call on the Lord. Today we have many formulas for spiritual victory, directions in which to exercise "faith" so we gain health, wealth, and happiness. Perhaps some of these work at times, but not when God begins to reveal Himself to us personally.
So we cry "Help!" We do not attempt to rebuke Satan, we fix our eyes on the Lord Jesus. We cease "saying our prayers" and begin to really call out to the Lord for deliverance from our troubles and pain. Psalms 18 describes what takes place in the spirit world as God begins to move on our behalf.
Everything in our life is shaken. The foundations of those "mountains," those previously unshakeable "rocks" we have trusted to save us, are shaken. They all are moved out of their place as the God of Jacob descends to help us and save us.
But why does He clothe Himself with darkness? Why is He covered with a canopy of darkness?
It is because He does not wish to reveal to the enemy or to us how He is going to deliver us. God will be God! He does not ask anyone’s permission to do what He chooses.
Sometimes God appears to be unfair. We proud Americans are prone to examine God’s works to see if He is fair. The truth is, God is the only One who is fair. It is just that His ways are so far above us we cannot see the whole picture. Some day we will. In the meantime we understand that He who gave His Son for us is "fair."
The Spirit seems to be saying that dreadful days are ahead for us in America. We are a proud, arrogant nation and are legalizing all kinds of filthy moral practices.
Our worst sin against God is abortion without sufficient cause, such as rape or the health of the mother. The idea that a mother is free to slay her offspring or permit it to live is manifestly wrong, except to minds corrupted by prevailing values. God is very displeased with this practice and our nation is going to suffer for it.
If we press into the Lord today, and become founded on the Rock, we will stand during the spiritually dark days on the horizon. Furthermore, we will be able to help other people survive, whether or not they are Christians.
But if we waste the present period of preparation, we will be swept away by the demonic power that is to be released, even though we make a profession of faith in Christ.
We continued at night with Psalms 18. We find David, in verse 20, claiming that God rewarded him according to the cleanness of his hands.
It is a wonder we got out of church by Monday morning, because the topic of righteous behavior is central to my thinking and teaching.
Our teaching today says that God does not reward us according to the cleanness of our behavior. All of our righteousness is as filthy rags. We are deemed righteous on the basis of our assent to the facts concerning the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are saved by "faith" alone. This is the prevailing understanding of the new covenant, and it has destroyed the moral strength of the Christian churches throughout the world.
There are three aspects that make us know the idea of being saved by "faith alone" is not what the Scripture means when it says we are saved by faith and not by works.
First, "faith," as defined by the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews means obedience to the revealed will of God.
Second, the Apostle Paul in several letter to the churches, informed the believers that if they continued to walk in the sinful nature they would not inherit the Kingdom of God; they would reap corruption.
Third, when Paul was contrasting works and faith, he was contrasting the works of the Law of Moses with a living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, a faith that causes us to interact at every moment with Christ as the new creation of righteous behavior is formed in us.
Remember, Paul went about teaching in Jewish synagogues. Paul was proving to Jews from the Scriptures that now that God has given Christ, we no longer obtain righteousness by practicing the works of the Law of Moses but by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.
We Gentiles have interpreted Paul’s statements in the early chapters of the Book of Romans to mean that a belief in the facts relating to Christ relieves us from all necessity for living a godly life.
The truth is, genuine faith in Jesus Christ, a faith that interacts with the living Christ each day, always results in moral transformation. We become a new creation that chooses to do God’s will at each moment. Salvation is deliverance from the power of sin and the creation of a desire to live righteously. A careful reading of the sixth chapter of the Book of Romans will reveal that eternal life is the result of living a holy, righteous life.
How could such obvious truth be overlooked by the competent Christian scholars who are directing God’s people today? I do not know, unless God hides the truth from people until He is ready to bring individuals here and there to Christ, ignoring institutions and mass movements.
People write to me via E-mail. So often the message is: "All the churches we visit are preaching grace-rapture-Heaven-health-wealth-success in this present world. What should we do?"
This is not an isolated condition. Such preaching is heard every Sunday morning in the Christian churches of America. The result is immoral people. The result of immoral people is an immoral government. The end of this spiritual drought is chaos. The newspapers reveal the crime and destruction that abound. And all of this is due to the incorrect doctrine being advanced.
The blood-washed have been deceived royally.
It is my point of view that somehow the Lord God of Heaven will bring His ministers back to the clear truths of the Kingdom of God. I would guess this transition will take place during the next twenty or thirty years.
Until such a return to the original truths of the New Testament occurs, we can expect the deterioration of every aspect of the American culture.
You can hear the morning sermon at morning.
You can hear the evening sermon at evening. After Wednesday, click on the bottom link of the middle column. The right column includes the links to Stan Josephsen and Edward Reiter.
The Conditional Nature of Salvation. The lesson today was from the third chapter of the Book of Hebrews. There are Bible teachers who, using a few verses of Scripture, have deduced that once a person "accepts Christ," he or she never again can be removed from God’s favor. I think this totally unscriptural position has arisen from man’s love for himself. He wants to be assured that whether he serves God or not, he will go to Heaven when he dies.
(3/27/2006) There are many passages—I am tempted to say the message of the entire Scriptures, Old Testament and New—that tell us God can change His mind, based on our behavior. Consider God’s words to Eli, the High Priest, when he did not rebuke his sons.
Scholars used the concept that since God is sovereign, once He declares that we are saved we never can be lost. Perhaps the antecedent of this idea is the overemphasis on predestination, that surfaces at times in Christian thinking.
There are several passages that declare flatly we can draw back from salvation after we begin walking in the "way of righteousness." Second Peter states that it would be better never to have walked this way than to draw back after once having done so.
One illustration used by New-Testament authors is that of the Jews dying in the wilderness after having started out from Egypt. What could be plainer than this illustration?
Another factor that impacts modern Christian thinking is the phrase "God’s unconditional love." The idea here is that God loves us even though we do not obey Christ and His Apostles. An intelligent individual who read the New Testament would marvel that people could be so confused.
There is no question in my mind but that the current people-centered philosophies in the American culture are spilling over into Christian thinking. "People must be happy no matter whether God is obeyed or not." This attitude accounts for the "once saved, always saved," "unconditional love," "God wants us to be wealthy and never suffer," "God will take all Gentile believers to Heaven so they will not experience the Great Tribulation or the reign of Antichrist," doctrines that abound. All of these are contrary to the message of the New Testament.
The third chapter of the Book of Hebrews is a good antidote for the poison that has entered the bloodstream of Christianity in America.
There are those who recognize that Hebrews is incompatible with current doctrine. So they either claim the book is not written to Christians, or else they use arguments from the Greek to prove certain passages do not mean what they state. This is a pseudo- scholarship, and its proponents should be ashamed of their lapse of intellectual ethics.
The third chapter of the Book of Hebrews states that we are part of Christ’s house if we hold fast to our courage and hope.
"If" means "on the condition that." We are the house of Christ on the condition that we hold fast to our courage and hope.
Does this statement in the third chapter of Hebrews mean that if we do not hold fast to our courage and hope we will not be the house of Christ?
There is no other way to interpret the passage.
But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast. (Hebrews 3:6)
Perhaps there are Bible teachers today who would claim that being Christ’s house and being saved are two different circumstances. We can be saved and yet not be Christ’s house.
I heard of one teacher who is saying that we can be cut from the Vine, from Christ, and still be saved. There may be others who teach that we cannot inherit the Kingdom of God because we continued to behave according to our sinful nature. But we still can be "saved."
From my point of view, it is a wicked practice to teach believers that even if they continue to sin they will still go to Heaven, because once they "accept Christ" they never can be cut off from the Lord.
I wonder how the Apostle Paul, who toward the end of his life was still attempting to "gain Christ," would view the current man-centered gospel.</