We are going to see the church of the Lord Jesus Christ split right down the middle. Because no one is preaching a living word from God, and as that word comes forth publicly you are either going to have to receive it as a word from God or reject it as heresy, and in so doing you are rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ. And in so doing you will be part of religious Babylon, a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird.
The unity that God is bringing forth right now is the unity of the Spirit, most Christians do not even know the difference between their spirit and soul.
This unity of spirit is not to be confused with that which is mentioned later in Ephesians 4:13, which tells us all these gifts were given until we all attain to the unity of the faith … Don’t confuse the unity of the Spirit with the unity of the faith.
There is no unity of the faith once delivered to the saints anymore, we have fallen away from that long before you were even born.
We must be dedicated to absolutely refuse any contention between us and our brothers and sisters in the Lord. This all comes from living on a soul-level, a human level and not on the spirit-level and even if your brother or sister becomes contentious with you manifesting a wrong spirit, determine that you will still walk with them because it takes two to cause a break. Even when he or she is antagonistic to us, we can be so filled with the love of God that we will hold them fast, breaking the power of deception over their minds.
Notice that verse 16 says, “The whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies.” Not what the Pastor supplies, but what every member supplies.
If we would only understand this—God doesn’t intend for us to lose any people. Those who come into a walk with God, will all be of one spirit, hearing the voice of the Lord.
When a person gets a real revelation of the Lord, they usually stay. Even though God puts them through seemingly unmerciful dealings, they still stay. When a few are so sorely tested that they are ready to leave, the Word tells us that the whole Body is held together by that which every joint supplies. We can hold on to people if we will. We can hold these pastors who are being sorely tested and brought right down to the extremity of dealings. I believe that.
Because when you come into a real walk with the Lord, the Spirit of the fear of the Lord will come upon you causing your body to shake and tremble as the Holy Spirit reveals your every thought, feeling, intention, action, and words, separating that which is human from that which is divine. You will see all your works are dead works proceeding from yourselves and not the living works that only Christ in you can perform.
In a walk with God, you must die to all personal ambition, trying to make a name for yourself, all your titles of Bishops, Apostle so and so, Doctor of theology so and so, Prophets, scholars and so forth must be seen for what they are manure!
Like the Apostle Paul, all his learning and training as a Pharisee of pharisees must be considered rubbish, that you may gain Christ, where you have the same desire. You must become the least in the Kingdom. You need to get off the platform and sit down in a seat and let a real oracle of God speak.
You need to resign from your church, sell your fancy homes and cars and give your money to the poor, or everything you built with go up in flames at the judgement seat of Christ. You must die to individuality, then God will set you in the body as he desires, not as you desire.
There is a kind of unity that comes when we say, “We agree to disagree,” but this unity I speak of is not an agreement that we will disagree. It goes far beyond that—up into the realm of the Spirit into the manifest Presence of the Lord, where Jesus becomes the head of the Church and where the whole Body is held together in the unity of the Spirit because we are diligent to preserve it. We will always manifest the divine nature of Christ.
We will allow nothing to get in the way. The members of the Body function, but in that functioning there is cohesion to one another. And this must be. We must replace the old ideas of church organization.
Once denominations held together with their ways of promoting and so forth. Those who couldn’t stand that would start independent churches, with each one doing his own little thing; and then they were a denomination with only four walls, instead of a vast conglomeration of churches.
What will keep us from being a denomination? What will keep us from being independent churches (private enterprises of some individual who does not want to walk with the other people)? You can’t blame him for not wanting to walk with a denomination. But when he says of us, “They’re just building a kingdom,” and withdraws, that doesn’t lead him anywhere either, because he ends by building his own kingdom. That is not what God wants of us.
How do we build the Kingdom of God? How do we walk as God wants us to walk? By the unity of the Spirit. The only way the Body will be held together, or cohere, is by this tremendous unity that the Spirit of God is bringing to our hearts. We believe for it. We will not let anything divide us. In no way will we be separated from our brothers and sisters in Christ.
I have noticed the demonic attack that comes against us as individuals in a walk with God. Although the Body is slowly coming together, how many times have you felt that this is a very lonely, individual walk?
I am aware that many of you have felt so cut off that it didn’t seem there was any flow from anyone else to you. We must break into this unity immediately because we do not have all the time in the world to work on this, and it is so important that this step be attained very soon.
I’m going to talk to you about what I think should be developing within the Body. I liken the time we are in, to the building of the wall in the days of Nehemiah. There were men positioned with the trumpets and Nehemiah said, “The builders stood by me, with a building tool and a fighting weapon, one in each hand” (Nehemiah 4:17–20). When the trumpet sounded at any point on the wall, everyone ran together and battled.
We can only minister to one another through our bond or oneness in the Spirit because there is no such thing as distance in the realm of Spirit, and the remnant is scattered across this world.
I can tell where people are at in their relationship with the Lord because I can sense their spirits. People will say, “You’re something of a mystic.” I would rather be called that, than a Christian, because I am becoming more and more perceptive and very aware of people’s spirits.
We must develop this unity of the Spirit so we can reach out in the Spirit. This is not a figure of speech; it is a breaking down of walls, a breaking down of our unawareness, until we become sensitive to each other. How can this Scripture about the Body be fulfilled: “Whether one member be honored, they all rejoice with it, or if one member weep, they all weep with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26), unless a very keen, close bond is developed between the people? More important than anything we have known in old order are these necessary steps to bond the people together in peace, to make them a strength to one another. I believe we have learned how to do this to some extent.
Do you think that what we are physically and, in our personality, can be affected by the oneness we have in our spirits? Do you think it would be impossible if we set about to do exactly what the Scriptures say about the oneness and the unity of the Spirit?
More important than doctrine, more important than teaching or indoctrination, is the strength the Body can give individuals in who are just coming into a walk with God at this time. We must learn how to do this. This is an entirely new frontier.
Begin to think differently. Throw out of the window the old order idea of joining a church. Deep discouragement comes over my spirit whenever I think about pastors opening their church for new membership or fellowship, come join our church. Why? Because the Spirit of God sets you in the Body as it pleases Him. You don’t join it; He sets you into it.
It is not that you decide to get a letter of transfer from your previous church and then come to a different church and ask the elders to bless you and pray over you.
Finally, you realize that God has set you in that body. God has done it for you. As a member of the Body, you can feel the flow from the other members of the Body to you. And the other members of the Body can feel that which you have flowing out to them. It is God who does this.
In our concept of the Body, we must eliminate the idea of “local” churches, and church after church will be reconstructed, not by denominational organization, but by a bond that no denomination could create in a thousand years—something that holds us together, fuses your spirit with your brother’s and sisters and brings about a unity of the spirit.
Then when someone in another city or country who is in trouble, those who are alert in the spirit will begin to pray for them, you should be able to discern what is happening in your brother or sisters’ life if you learn how to wait on the Lord.
Russia has been working for a long time now to perfect extrasensory perception, thought control, mind reading, remote viewing to make it possible for them to pick up the vibrations of people in the Pentagon to know if we are preparing for war or what we are doing. This of course is a counterfeit of the gifts of the Spirit.
They don’t need to steal any papers now or use any of the sophisticated technology; they can penetrate the mind. That’s what Satan is doing in the world on a psychic and soulish level. Do you think God will let that Ishmael thing come up and not be ready with the true thing of promise?
The watchmen will see eye to eye when He brings again Zion (Isaiah 52:8). The army of the Lord is coming forth and they will not thrust one another through, nor break ranks, but they will move because of the unity in the Spirit (Joel 2:7, 8).
In the strength of that unity, we’re going to lose sight also of the individual attainment of a gift. We will become more concerned about the well furnishing of gifts for the whole Body. No longer will we pray, “O Lord, I want to do my thing!” What is your thing, brother? “Oh, I want to prophesy, I want to reveal things, I want to search people’s hearts—all of this I want to do.”
We’re going to lose sight of that individual seeking of the gifts, and we’re going to be more concerned about the entire well-rounded flow in the unity of the Spirit, because that is the key.
It is possible for someone who has just come into a walk with the Lord and who knows nothing about the gifts of the Spirit to be commissioned, with the laying on of hands by people who have gifts of healing or faith and sent out to minister. That person, though almost a stranger to a walk with God, would be able to heal the sick and receive revelation the same as anyone else. They can’t understand it. And when they come to the next service and attempt to do it again, and fail miserably, they do not understand why.
The Body can learn how to transfer the flow of the Spirit through the ministries, so that if one of our brothers were in prison, alone and discouraged, and we were not allowed to see him, we could visit him in the Spirit and bring revelation to him. By our bond in the Spirit, we could do this. We will have to shift gears and remove ourselves even further from the rank and file of the old-order churches and their procedures. We must become a more spiritual people. This does not mean that we’re not going to be practical. Though we are seated in the heavenly places, at the same time our feet are on solid ground. The gates of hell cannot prevail against that kind of walk.
This Walk with God must have the aspect of practicality; it must be workable. I have seen things that were spooky, far out, and mystical, and that’s not what God is talking to us about—in no way! Don’t begin to think in terms of the occult or just the mystical, because that’s a psychic realm with which we want nothing to do. That realm has been invaded by Satan, and it will not be restored until the Kingdom is well established on earth. So, stay out of it! Don’t get mixed up in astral projection. It is Satan’s territory at present. Stay away from it! But we have a truth you can believe in. It is not only related to your psychic or soul life and your mind, but it goes on into the realm of your spirit.
I don’t think people really understand yet that the Kingdom is basically the day of spirit. We are not yet in the day of spirit, but we are far enough advanced in its beginning that we must think in terms of what the Kingdom is.
What is the Kingdom of God? It is not meat and drink, but righteousness and joy and peace in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17). The Kingdom of God is within you. It doesn’t come with observation (Luke 17:20, 21). It’s not in the realm of the psychic nor is it in the realm of the physical senses. It is in the realm of your spirit. This is what the Kingdom of God is. We need more teaching about the Kingdom. The Kingdom is here and will invade every realm of the earth—every realm.
All creation is going to be liberated into the freedom of the sons of God. We must start somewhere, and if you want to take a step toward the glorious manifestation of the sons of God, start praying this in your church: “O God, make us one spirit here. Cause us to participate in one Body by one Spirit. Teach us how to do this.”
Some of you will never overcome your moods—your ups and downs—until you participate in the stability of the Body of Christ. If you move as individuals, fluctuating and varying moods will control you because your soul life is entering into it.
But as we come into the pure realm of the spirit, we will find ourselves moving on a sustained level, coming up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13).
I am deeply burdened about our attaining this. The members of the Body will have to learn to draw on one another more and more. This message is not a luxury to me; it is a necessity, as I entered into the prophecies about divine health. I have really suffered with that divine health for five years. I doubted whether I would have lived very long, and that’s why I believe in those prophecies.
Divine health is not a matter of reaching in to say, “Now, I feel better. I’m going to be better and better every day.” God is not rejuvenating the old nature, the old flesh, or the old body, and teaching us how to have longevity with all the organs and glands functioning forever.
I don’t think that is what God is trying to do. He is trying to get us to reach into that great flow of life that belongs to the Body, so we can participate in the resurrection life of Jesus Christ.
When that invades your body, and the Spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, it will quicken your mortal body (Romans 8:11). That will be the key to the way it comes. It’s a quickening of the mortal body. Therefore, we will not be ministering so much on the level of divine healing, as we will be learning, in the unity of the Spirit, to walk in divine health. We will not be striving for victories over various things, but we will learn how to walk on a sustained plane of victory because we will be walking in the Spirit.
We are going to learn the key that I have learned in the past year, that which has kept me alive, even with the battle coming against me. I keep saying, “God, I have to find the reason why I can’t handle this.” I pray for other people; I bless everybody else. What is happening to me?
Everything that worked for me before won’t work now.” In this last year there has been a transition, and it will work!
But you will have to stop relying upon what you did before and enter it by learning to draw on one another and from the Lord. We will work on this until our hearts beat as one and our spirits respond to the Lord as one.
We need to understand a little something about witchcraft. Then I will go on to show you how the ministry of the Body works. Witchcraft is said to be the oldest religion in the world, and claims are made that Christianity is a come lately religion. That is not true. And I think I can prove it to you beyond any reasonable doubt. Witchcraft is Satan’s way of borrowing from something else.
For example, it takes something like a curse and transfers it to another person. But in doing that, Satan is only applying a principle that God turned loose in the world.
Read Isaiah 53:6 again to see that our walk with God is based on transference: … and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. This is transference.
If you have any righteousness, you didn’t generate it—it was transferred to you. God imparted it to you. He gave you Christ’s righteousness.
The basic principle of the Scriptures is transference. “Well,” you may say, “I never heard that before.” The fundamental church world doesn’t use our terminology because they haven’t had enough revelation to know that these terms are needed, but we have the revelation that drives us into the depth and the heart of the Scripture where we learn that everything is received by way of transference.
In the Old Testament, when the Day of Atonement came, they laid their hands upon the scapegoat, transferring to it all their sin, and then they led it out in the wilderness to die.
The Lord has laid upon Jesus the iniquity of us all. He bore our sins, carried our sorrows, and our iniquity. The truth of it is right there. God did that. Our sin was transferred to Him so that His righteousness could be transferred to us. That’s the whole idea.
If you have never understood why God had to send His Son in the form of human flesh, now it is plain. He had to come, as a man, and be made a curse in order that we, as men and women, might be liberated and take on the divine nature and become sons of God.
If He hadn’t come that far down and had all our filthiness imparted to Him, we could not have His glorious nature imparted to us. Doesn’t that make sense?
Satan recognizes this divine principle and perverts it in an attempt to destroy. How do witches perform a healing? They find an open channel and take one man’s sickness from him and put it on another. In the psychic realm they learn how to transfer things.
In reading about the early days of Hawaii, I remember an interesting thing the Kahunas (the tribal priests) were able to do. The Kahunas thought it great sport to find some fine looking Episcopalian or Anglican minister walking down the street, wearing his clerical collar, and then seeing a drunken sailor lying in the gutter, they would transfer his drunkenness to the priest, so he would pass out. This was great sport for them. In a positive way, we can impart to others what God has given to us.
Paul told Timothy, And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. 2 Timothy 2:2.
That’s why we lay hands on people. That’s why we recognize a form of apostolic succession, though not as taught by the Roman Catholics, because you must start with an apostle. The Roman Catholics apostolic line was fouled up, and the succession ended right there.
But God can come on the scene and speak and raise up apostles in any generation. He is doing it now. All over the world He is raising up His men and women, and when He puts an anointing upon them, He gives them the capacity to impart to others what He has put within them. On and on it goes.
The whole succession continues, for they can impart to others, who in turn can impart to still others. That again is transference. He gives His gifts, and the gifts are then transferred.
There is another marvelous truth here. The transference does not deplete you, for despite all that you give, you are not diminished by it. It’s like the miracle of the loaves and fishes—the more you break and give out, the more you have left over. It just keeps on going.
As we learn this principle, I think we will start learning how to draw from what God has imparted within the Body. The Body is like a great bank and all the people represent channels God has raised up.
Instead of trying to start more new churches, we ought to give some real diligence to thoroughly establishing and making impregnable the churches already who have learned how to walk with God.
As we concentrate on making each a great depository of all the gifts and ministries necessary for their function with a unity, they could be made so strong that they would not simply function as individuals, but as a Body. The babes in Christ would be able to draw on all of that. This is a true concept of what God wants in the unity of the Spirit.
We must receive this revelation and start right here! We may make some mistakes, but we learn from our mistakes. I learn more from a mistake than from doing something right. When I do it right, I don’t know what I did right that made it right, but when I do it wrong, I know what I did that made it wrong.
How are we going to learn to walk in this unity? The purest services we’ve had are called Bless-Ins. It looks simple, yet they are the most difficult services to lead. The level of revelation has been higher in the Bless-In than in other service. Why?
Because we teach something very simple. The first thing we do is to eliminate the idea that they are a congregation of individuals. We show them how to take their walls down, how to start flowing together, and how to bless one another. As soon as the blessing is flowing from one to another, they are brought into a kind of unity.
In the old order, a young people’s gathering had to have special musical numbers, a real peppy sermon, a lot of psychology, and an altar call. Trained workers would whisk them down to the altar, work with them a little, and feel that they really had it going on. You wonder just how much deliverance the people received.
We have eliminated all that individual action. Because there is so much anointing of the Lord in a bless in, alcoholics will sober up, come off drugs, find the Lord, or be healed.
Some ask, “Don’t you believe in altar calls anymore?” I believe in something better. I don’t believe that we must go through that old psychological route. I am very much in favor of people confessing Jesus Christ as Lord over their life, that He might confess them before the Father. I agree that you should believe in your heart and confess with your mouth. I don’t deny that. But the Scriptures which teach that are not speaking about altar calls.
People can be saved right in their seats as they believe and confess Him as Lord. When the Spirit is flowing and they learn to take their walls down, such deep conviction comes upon them that they come right through to the Lord. I have seen them bring their walls down and come up for ministry and the Lord would reveal: “You’re not a believer. You’ve never accepted the Lord.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“Yes, I do, right now.”
We have many people saved, but it’s done so simply, in such a matter-of-fact way that it doesn’t build up any personality and say, “Oh my, look how many souls he’s won!” I don’t like that idea.
I like to have the job done thoroughly, with the people glorifying the Lord in it. I like to see those people established and swallowed up in the Body and not feel that they, as individuals, took this step and that step. I’d rather see them swallowed up in the Body. The Lord has loosed them, healed them, and delivered them, and they flow in the Body from that time on.
I believe that’s a purer vision of what happened in New Testament times.
This bond of unity in the Spirit is the most important thing currently. More important than the needs of other things, far more important than the need of doctrine, is the need of this unity, this oneness of spirit.
If we get this vision, there will never be such a thing as a little church off on an island feeling alone, battling it through. If you question that, I have some Scriptures for you in the book of Hebrews. There are so many good verses in the Bible, so full of revelation, so full of truths that have deep mysteries and pictures in them, and here we are reading them over and over, waiting for God to lift the veil from our eyes and enable us to see the truths that are hidden in plain sight. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Hebrews 12:1.
What is this cloud of witnesses? The eleventh chapter talks about all of those who died in the faith, of whom the world was not worthy and ends with this: And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they should not be made perfect. Now eliminate the chapter division and continue on: Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us.… You know who they are. I’m glad you can’t see them yet; it could greatly disturb you. But they can communicate with you and admonish some of you for the way you are running the race. They would be highly critical of it and say, “What do you mean by calling that a walk with God? This is a run—get moving!”
In time we will be able to tell who is communicating with us, Holy Spirit, cloud of witnesses, angels, they all communicate with those who run the race. The cloud of witnesses wants to pass their baton, which is their Mantle to you and sow into your calling if it is like theirs on the earth.
In heaven everything runs smoothly in divine order, so that all of heaven is focused upon what is happing on the earth, because it is the manifestation of the sons of God on the earth that we loose the rest of creation from futility and expand the kingdom through out this universe, and how many others yet to be created.
The Parousia, the time of His presence, which will be culminating in the first resurrection, can all happen within our generation. We are in the beginning of the Parousia, the days in which all these things will unfold. All the saints, as a cloud, are hovering closer all the time.
Don’t get the idea that I’m talking about distance. It isn’t that the dead are far away and then they come closer. In the realm of spirit distance does not exist as a reality. Remember that.
Distance is a physical thing, not a spiritual thing. They are just on another spiritual plane, and we are surrounded by that cloud of witnesses. You may say, “That sounds like spiritualism.” The spiritualists try to break through that cloud, and they generally manage to get closer to the soul and mental level than the spirit level and there they encounter demons.
Most of the time that is what they tune in to. We are not spiritualists, and we are not practicing spiritualism or witchcraft. We are practicing the positive application of God’s principle in the transference of righteousness and blessings to people. We bless and curse not.
I’m pointing out to you that the Scriptures bear this out, that even those in that cloud of witnesses can be so close to us that it is an incentive for us to lay aside every weight and to run. How much more should those of us who are here on this earth have an incentive to enter the unity and the spiritual awareness of one another! How much more should we do this!
Don’t think that the physical world you see is the true reality. The reality is not found in the physical world; reality is found in the spirit world. Regardless of what you are physically, you can’t prove that you’re a child of God by your physical body. Your body has the promise of redemption, and He gave you the Holy Spirit as the seal of your inheritance so you would know that He will finish the job and that this physical body will be redeemed.
In the meantime, you may carry some prayer promises in your pocket, and if that doesn’t work, you have some aspirin handy because you are aware that the physical man has no visible evidence of salvation at present.
What about your soul? In the past we talked so much about the saving of the soul, about going out and getting a soul saved. That is a process. Your soul has to do mainly with your thoughts and emotions. I have seen many a person who has been serving the Lord a long time, but still has a temper, still have problems with lust and the words that proceed out of their mouth. This means that their soul still has need of being saved and fully delivered. They are still mixing the psychic, soulish element into redemption.
What happens when a man is born of God? His spirit is born of God! God is a Spirit and His sons are going to be spirits. “Spirits of just men made perfect” is the way the Word of God describes it (Hebrews 12:23). You had better be more concerned about your spirit because you may have conned your soul into a reasonable facsimile of a Christian walk and still not yet have it worked in your spirit.
There are some people who say, “I’m in the Walk,” and they have not yet had a revelation of it to their spirits. They are not in it until God brings the revelation to their spirits. They will continue to hold onto everything of their old self-life and their ambition, walking fearfully and without being fully committed, until the day God reveals the truth to their spirits.
Since the reality is found in the realm of your spirit, you need more teaching regarding your whole spirit, soul, and body being preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord (1 Thessalonians 5:23). We need to learn how to become whole people. In this walk with God, I watch the way people worship. They start out worshiping in the Spirit, and soon they all know how to hit the same chord and how to go about it and it sinks right down, just short of that spirit level.
I am constantly on the alert to correct this because it is so easy for the people to sink down into a form and a rut and miss it completely.
There must be real diligence to flow together as never before with pastors and churches flowing together in one Body all the way through.
We will make the step toward what God wants. We can make no progress except in the direction God is moving. If we go back to anything else, even to what God has done in the past, we will find only a diminishing amount of anointing upon it. The key will be to move forward into this unity of the Spirit, learning how to flow in God.
Let me point out to you why the Body must be pure. Remember the warning in Hebrews 12:15: “Beware lest there be in any of you a root of bitterness springing up and thereby many defiled.”
Because this Walk is reaching into the realm of spirit, whatever is in any one person can spread through the Body because people are open in spirit to each other.
If that will work in the wrong way, how much more will it work in the right way, because we are constantly overcoming the bad spirit. If we have a good spirit and someone begins to prophesy out of a greatly anointed spirit, that prophecy will be creative. It will flow through the Body, and everyone will receive it and be lifted up.
Don’t you desire for the day that we stand in the presence of the Lord and whatever God starts moving through the Body, the whole-Body flows in it, and it becomes contagious?
Reach in, for we can have this in the name of the Lord. What a purifying experience it will be to come to the house of God and find every oppression wiped away because of this unity in the whole Body. Lord, seal this revolutionary word to our hearts. It is pointing toward a day to come. The day of spirit walking in our inheritance in the Lord.
I think that the spirit, which was upon Christ when He faced the cross, is the spirit that will be upon us when the work of the cross is done in us.
What did Christ have when the crowd came to Him with torches, clubs, and swords in Gethsemane? He asked, “Whom seek ye?” They said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” When He replied, “I am He,” they all tumbled down like bowling pins. This was a little exhibition of what He could do.
He knew He could have called for twelve legions of angels if He chose. What an awareness of that world of spirit He had. As He faced the cross, that spirit world was very real to Him! When the work of the cross is done in us, we will walk the same way.
Do you believe in the manifestation of the sons of God? I don’t think it will be individual sons going around showing their muscles. It will be the family; this will be a family affair. We are going to flow together and there will be neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female. It will be something of another order, and everyone in the Body of Christ who is moving into this realm of spirit will experience it.