Knowing the Lord

Last night I was thinking and praying and trying to describe to the Lord and myself what I now believe about the Lord’s return.

Paul to the Thessalonians said that Jesus has not yet returned because the antichrist had not been revealed. He said this to comfort those who thought they missed it. I have felt at times that I have seen the antichrist but I don’t know whether it was real or a vision or what. 

Anyway, having thought these things, I went to sleep. I then dreamt that I had to take a stand against the lies of the antichrist. In my dream, I held to the truth of God. 

It seems that for the past days, I’ve been battling, particularly yesterday, with a certain thought that’s from the devil. This morning I again quoted and declared God’s word on the matter and immersed myself in the word of God. At one point, I felt it was over and then heard the Lord say He had sent angels to minister to me, whom I perceived at that moment in the room with me. I felt peace and relief and gave glory to God dwelling upon His goodness and ascribing to Him the greatness due His name.

After, I studied God’s word about when angels came to minister to Jesus. I hope you’ll join me on the journey of discovery that follows. Scripture confirms the validity of my experience. 

Mark 1

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Coming up out of the water, He immediately saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven, saying, “You are My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

With God having declared with His voice in and from heaven to Christ that Christ was His own, the Spirit of God put Jesus into the desolate. Here is how Mark describes the Messiah’s experience:

12 The Spirit immediately drove Him into the wilderness. 13 And He was there in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts. And the angels ministered to Him.

This implies a pattern of temptation (though still protected by God), victory, and ministering angels. It should be first noted that prior to this, God had declared in the voice of thunder that Jesus was His own Son, and the Spirit of peace had descended upon Him in His ascending, rising, out of the water. I say the voice of God thundered for it thundered when God spoke from the cloud on the Mt. of Transfiguration. Here then is the pattern for us.

Matthew 4 describes in further detail this pattern and how angels minister to Jesus after He made His stand in the truth:

11 Then the devil left Him, and immediately angels came and ministered to Him.

Key to both passages is what happened after resisting the devil by speaking God’s word and being strengthened by angels. Jesus then began His ministry.

Luke describes an angel coming to strengthen Jesus after Jesus prayed on the Mt. of Olives before Judas came with soldiers to arrest Jesus. 

Though the passage is long, we can learn from this account more about knowing the Lord and fulfilling God’s purpose in our lives. 

From Luke 23:

39 According to His custom, He came out and went to the Mount of Olives. And His disciples followed Him. 40 When He came there, He said to them, “Pray that you may not fall into temptation.” 41 He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me. Nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” 43 An angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. 44 And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly. And His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.45 When He rose from prayer and had come to His disciples, He found them sleeping from sorrow. 46 He said to them, “Why do you sleep? Rise and pray, lest you fall into temptation.”

Just before these verses, Jesus asked His disciples if they had lacked anything when He sent them out without money or a sword to minister. He then told the disciples that (unlike before) the time had come to carry a sword and money. It seems that Jesus is drawing our attention to the issue of our hearts. Peter would cut off the ear of a soldier when the authorities came to arrest Jesus. Could this have been the temptation Jesus was warning about? Let’s look at the problem of the natural mind. 

Jesus said to take up the sword, which evidently Peter interpreted literally. The sword Jesus was referring to appears to be not the physical sword but the sword of the Spirit, the word of God and prayer communion with Him. Peter and the disciples couldn’t get this, but we can understand it because we have been born of the Spirit.

The posture of Messiah kneeling and praying is the victorious posture of those who know the Father as Jesus knows Him. This is where the warfare takes place. This is where we enter into the economy of the new millennium. How is this done? It’s done by walking in conversation with God through the grace of Jesus. This is the heart of the matter. It's the lifestyle of Enoch and Elijah before God took them. After Jesus resolved His will to God’s will, an angel came and strengthened Jesus. Far from suffering from an inflated ego because of the angelic visitation, Jesus responded to the angel’s touch with greater earnest prayer.

When we think of Jesus arising from prayer, we imagine Jesus stopped praying and stood up, having finished praying. The word "From" can, however, also imply cause. In this case, we may consider Jesus rising or standing up due to His prayerful allegiance to the will of God through agonizing prayer. Standing by the power of God makes sense especially considering how the angel strengthened Jesus. Jesus then tells His disciples also to arise. The trumpet voice of Jesus is what raises us up from our sleep and sorrow. Here we have a picture or pattern of walking with God in a way that we don’t fall into temptation and how God strengthens us, raises us up, that we can also be instrumental to strengthen others. 

At the end of all this, I thought of this song. The words focus attention on intimate relationship with God to whom we are called to know through the victorious will of Christ. 

Be not afraid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDClyf9jjTE

Quantum Mechanics and The Last Days

For quite a while I've been noticing the ways different people look at the world and world events.

One group is asleep. They focus on the small matters of life like what programs to watch on TV. They look at life through the lens of their own priorities.

Another group is aware of what is happening geo-politically in the world. They see their liberties being siphoned away. Some of these people may even be up in arms about it.

Where then do Christians stand?

Here's one way we may look at things.

It should be first accepted that two opposing things can exist at the same time. This is easy to support. One may be experiencing financial hardship while another enjoys financial blessing. 

We can also accept that we as Christians living by faith are not called to know every rise of evil that is happening in the world. 

Related to that, believers obedient to the voice of Jesus are not called to bury their heads under the sand in pretense.

Here is the crux of the matter. Believers are to be being transformed through the renewing of our minds to have our lives shaped after the Messiah whom we serve.  This means we do what Jesus wants and we walk pleasing to God in all things apart from our residual sinful condition. We approve His will. Through overcoming, or having overcome, we can experience the great blessings of God in and through our lives.

Here is the irony. When we focus on what we know or don't know about what is good and what is evil, the whole thing collapses, just like what happens to waves when scientists observe electrons being fired in the two-slit quantum experiment. 

Faith, on the other hand, believes the word of God completely. The obedient live and walk by their faith not by what they see. In quantum terms, they don't focus in a way that collapses the wave by how they perceive. 

We may take this thinking one step further as believers in Jesus Messiah. We are being saved through water as Moses, Israel, and Noah were all delivered through water. The psalm teaches that the Lord has set the roads or paths through the sea. This is how it is possible for believers to be experiencing the blessings of God in life while the foundations of the world are crumbling and melting through intense heat. 

Those who dwell upon the earth, however, cannot perceive what is true because rather than living by faith in God whom they cannot see, they choose to live by matter, that is, what they can see. 

Someone might conclude that I believe there is no intersection of the two realities. I would just say that both realities may be perceived to exist at the same time. Furthermore, Christ is reigning until God puts everything under His feet, so that all that will be will be under or influenced by Christ's reign.

Here is the confirmation of Scripture.

Isaiah 60 describes darkness covering the earth and deep darkness covering the people. In stark contrast is the Lord shining upon Jerusalem who rises at God’s command. We rise at the voice and touch of Jesus our Savior.

Habakkuk 2 tells how the glory of the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth, but it’s not a positive picture. This covering of the earth is how the roosters of the sinners come back to roost:

¹³ Lo, is it not from Jehovah of Hosts And peoples are fatigued for fire, And nations for vanity are weary?¹⁴ For full is the earth of the knowledge of the honour of Jehovah, As waters cover [the bottom of] a sea.

There is no satisfaction apart from Christ. In Him is our fortress. 

The Isaiah 11 description of the nature of the Messianic reign is consistent with Habakkuk’s prophecy. Under Christ, the innocent are not hurt by the poisonous creatures though the child puts her hand in the asps’ nest. Why is this? Because as Christ is, so we are in the world. He does not judge by what He sees or what He hears.

We, too, are called to be hearing His voice in our ears and focusing our sight on Him to be with Him in His revealing. This is how we live in the Messianic reign. 

We Are Entering and Being Saved

Much of what follows is from the Greek Interlinear of the Bible.

John 10:7

Jesus is the door of the sheep. He said that all who came before Him are thieves and robbers, and His own sheep did not hear them. 

Jesus continued in John 10:9: 

I am the door through me if-ever anyone may be entering he shall-be-being saved and shall-be-entering and shall-be-coming-out and pasture shall-be-finding.

The thief is not coming for any reason except that he be stealing and be slaughtering and be destroying. Jesus came that life His sheep may be having and superabundantly they may be having.

We must continue to close our ears to any voice that we are tempted to put before the voice of Jesus. Every time we hear the voice of Jesus we are entering and being saved. We are both entering in and coming out. Entering into His joy and coming out of our sorrows. We have the promise of Jesus of experiencing life in superabundance.

Matthew 24:13-14

The yet one-enduring into consummation, this one shall-be-being-saved, and shall-be-being-proclaimed this, the well-message of the kingdom in all the inhabited (earth) into testimony to-all the nations and then shall-be-arriving the consummation.

The one who is hearing the voice of Jesus is the one-enduring into consummation, for he or she is the one being saved.

3 john 1:2

Beloved! concerning all I-am-wishing you to be being well-wayed and to-be-being-sound according-as is-being-well-wayed of you the soul. 

The Millennial Economy

"Slaves, obey your masters in the Lord" is sometimes used to teach Christians to be good employees who do their work to and for the Lord. This Scripture is not telling Christians to give up their freedom of serving the Lord with a clear conscience. We are never instructed to become a slave to a system that exchanges the truth for a lie. We are never to deny what God says to do. If we do reject His will, we will suffer for not submitting to the Lordship of Christ. Rather than being conformed to the world, we are to be transformed by what God says to us. 

Scripture tells God’s people to arise. Paul reminds the Ephesians of the Lord’s words, `Arouse thyself, thou who art sleeping, and arise out of the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee.’ Why does Paul say this? He had just said that people who live covetous, idolatrous lives cannot experience the inheritance God has for them. It’s clear. Arise, sleeper, awake from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Zechariah in the Old Testament could only see the two olive trees and the seven lamps because the angel had first shaken him awake. John in Revelation 1 only stood on his feet because Jesus touched his shoulder with His right hand, the same that held the seven stars (the seven angels). If we awake, we will shine like the stars. 

Jews believe that descending is part of ascending, and we can relate that to waking up and rising up. Abraham, after receiving the promise of God to be blessed as the stars in heaven, went down to Egypt, where he began adapting to his surroundings, but God said He called His people out of Egypt. Jacob rose up and went down to Egypt because of Joseph. God promised to make Jacob a great nation within a contrasting environment. 

The question arises as to why God would lead His people to Egypt. It was to form their character in a crucible so they could become pure and ascend Mt. Zion. They had gotten to an extremely low spiritual condition before God went down to them and carried them out and up. Israel experienced 42 journeys of leaving Egypt—all to get Egypt out of them. Every step of obedience to the voice of Jesus brings us closer to the sun shining at noon day. God continues to raise up a people after His own heart today through Jesus, the Son of King David.

Jesus equated the sleeping with the disobedient at His second coming. Since their hearts were far from Him, they could not see the promise of His coming. They said, where is His promise? So, we perceive that seeing His promise accompanies a heart of obedience, which we receive as our inheritance from Christ Himself. When Jesus came to Bethany to raise Lazarus, Martha went out to meet Jesus, and it was through Martha’s word to Mary (that Jesus was there) that Mary arose (John 11).

All this to say that we are granted grace to walk in obedience through the resurrection power of Christ. Our hope is always on His word to us as a light to our path. We participate in His economy of blessing when we walk in obedience to Christ’s word in relationship with us. 

Reality Check

Jeremiah 14

¹⁸ If I go out in the field, I see those slain with the sword. If I enter the city, I see the victims of famine. Meanwhile, prophets and cohanim ply their trade in the land, knowing nothing.’”

Reality witnesses against the so-called prophets who say there will not be famine or war. There will be peace in the land.

The problem is that people don’t connect the drought or physical condition of the earth to God’s opposition to their lifestyles.

People must wake up. Take action to come into alignment with the will and purpose of God. Christ has made the way for us. He died on the cross and rose from the dead. We need to draw near with a sincere heart to God through His one and only Son. 

Then we can expect blessings upon our land.

The Moon Shall Shine as the Sun

When John saw Jesus, he saw Him as the sun and the angels as stars. This imagery of Revelation 1 omits the moon.

The moon shines as the sun on the day the Lord binds up the wounds of His people. The moon is again mentioned in Revelation chapter 12 where it is under the feet of the woman travailing in childbirth. The imagery there strongly implies the Lordship of Christ which comes about through the travail of His people to the forming of Christ Himself in them. As Christ has been snatched up, so shall we be whom He has formed.

The church is arrayed with the sun as the woman is, that is, as we through overcoming have put on Christ, as we have when we first come to know Him. 

The moon shines as the sun on the day when the towers fall (Isaiah 30:25-26).  This is when all the best laid plans of men come to waste. It is the day of slaughter, but for God's people a day of deliverance. They walk directed by God's word. It illuminates the path and assures us that we won't stumble. 

The Jews believe that on this day that the moon will radiate instead of reflect light. This in Christian terms is the work of Christ in us to radiate through us. He has wrought the change in His people bringing them into new covenant with Him in His will and through His blood. No longer is the will of God something to be grasped at but rather as is true with Jesus becomes true of us, we no longer regard equality with God a thing to be grasped but rather we serve.

When the time comes for Christ to be revealed in glory, we shall be revealed as having been with Him. Before that time, we do not give up doing good knowing that our labor is not in vain. 

Being Awake

Harold Perkins, former professional baseball player and now author, describes in his book How God Took Me from $300 to $30,000 a Month Overnight what I believe many of us can learn from, but it was his recounting of Jesus in the garden just before the traitor identified Him that particularly got my attention.

I've heard explanations of why the disciples would have been extremely sleepy. They had just finished a large meal and so forth, but it's still difficult for me to accept. I now believe there's much more to it than that.

Jesus, we know, has been telling us over and over to be awake so we won't be caught off guard when He returns.

The question is this. How do we throw off the very heavy weight of sleep?

The answer is that Jesus was working it out the three times He went away from the disciples to pray. Each time, He returned to them only to find them sleeping again and again.

How many of us long for another way through difficulties other than the way things are going now in our lives? If we could only change this, or if only this hadn't happened, or if only this certain thing would happen? All this deflects our attention from the real matter at hand, the condition of our hearts.

Jesus, however, overcame the problem of our hearts there in Gethsemane. Hebrews chapter 8 states:

10 because this [is] the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord, giving My laws into their mind, and upon their hearts I will write them, and I will be to them for a God, and they shall be to Me for a people;

The covenant He writes on our hearts is what enables us to obey Him in every way including in the very simple things.

It's time to wake up to walk with God as Jesus did. Jesus passes His will to us. It's our inheritance through the power of the new covenant, ratified through the body and blood of Jesus. 

We can now walk in love for God and love others without putting upon them the demands of the law, for Christ Himself has set us free from its bonds.

Fire From Heaven

I first experienced fire coming down from heaven at a TD Jakes meeting. I felt I had been baptized in fire. 

This caused other fires. I preached the gospel in public school to my 3rd grade class I was teaching with all of them standing up to confess their faith in Christ. I laid bare the choice between the Bible and the state before my principal (she's a Christian) in public before a room full of district and city dignitaries. Later, the principal said this experience changed her life, but at the time she had the police escort me off campus. As a result of all this, a head pastor of a very large church in Los Angeles took me under his wing—he said I was like his son— but rejected me because he could not contain me. I said what I saw. Undiplomatically.

I clung to God’s word during that time like I never had. God has ordained a path for each believer to get through the sea of troubles that surround. There is only one way through and it’s by the blood of Jesus and the word of our testimony when we do not love our lives to the point of death.  

 Under the circumstances, I could only act as I had. This is what crazy people think and say. It’s like trying to do what is necessary to maintain or bring back equilibrium to life. The key to get through is to cling only to God’s word. I picture it as getting through the eye of a needle; the only thing that makes it through is the believer and his or her faith.

The battle was against thoughts that could destroy me. I chose to hold only to God’s word. This created or revealed the path through the hell I was experiencing. I preached the gospel on the streets of L.A. to gang members and drug addicts, homeless and destitute. I came through unscathed. 

[As a quick aside, my second experience with fire coming down from heaven was very different, which I may describe in another post. I'll just say that my first and second experiences may be compared an outer scorecard and an inner scorecard (reference Warren Buffet).]

So, what was going on with me? I never had the same experience again. All I can say was that it was like I was living in the end times in the book of Revelation. It was at this time I began to walk through unseen doors which is how the Lord led me in to a variety of churches to meet many pastors, the kind with their own entourage. For example, this is the time I met Jim Bakker after his release from prison (and his son), hung out with Matthew Barnett of the Dream Center in Los Angeles, and met many others you would have heard of. 

This I believe is how the Lord leads us in safe paths in these last days; only by walking with Christ will God open those doors we need opened to do His will and complete His purpose for us. 

Please don’t think I’m implying that all must or will have the same experience. We all, however, must cling to God’s word exclusively. It could be that I was such a jerk that I had to go through what I have while others who are already faithful don't have to. I can't say, but I do know that Christ says in Scripture that the call to the faithful is to remain so. Others, like me maybe, have to go through a more uncomfortable refining process. 

Disaster is the consequence of our own way of thinking (Jeremiah 6:19), the “fraud” of Jeremiah 6:13. Paul also calls fraud the thinking that what we do, our living up to holy rules, determines our salvation.

Salvation is always only by grace. 

The roaring seas (Jeremiah 6:20) are the enemies, the obstacles sent against those set in their own thinking and refuse to listen to what Jesus has to say to them. 

On the other hand, the voice of Messiah brings with it all we need to love and serve God with all our hearts. All good things come from Him from above, and His goodness to us is everlasting. 

Hallelujah, for His salvation is full of joy and glory!