By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of Cod, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover, and the sprinkling of the blood, that the destroyer of the firstborn should not touch them. By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were swallowed up. Hebrews 11:24–29.
The book of Hebrews, especially this eleventh chapter, indicates incidents that are not always recorded in the text of the Old Testament. For instance, Genesis 5 tells us that Enoch was not, for God took him. Hebrews 11, however, says that by faith Enoch was translated, and before he was translated, he had this witness: that he pleased God. Without faith it is impossible to please God. He that cometh to Him must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Enoch pleased the Lord. He had faith. He walked by faith and was translated.
I doubt whether many things really happen because the Lord surprises you and thrusts it upon you. He has a way of opening it up to your heart. Apostle Paul describes it in this way: it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). Moses kept the Passover in that same way. He had an intense desire. First, God worked in him to will. The intensity of his will was set upon it. Then the doing of it came forth.
If someone does not care whether God heals him or not, he will not be healed at all. On the other hand, if someone has his heart set upon God to be healed, he will be healed. If a man thinks, “I don’t care if I prophesy or not,” he will not prophesy; but if he really sets his will to walk with God and to prophesy, he will be prophesying, probably in the very next service. These things work that way. It is God who puts an intense desire within us, a deep hungering and thirsting and yearning after the Lord. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled (Matthew 5:6).
I will not sit and wait for things to happen, but I will be careful lest some action that I take would nullify God’s effort, Abraham had the promise of a son. Sarah was so old that she told him, “It just looks like it is not going to be. Why don’t you take my handmaiden, Hagar?” He did, and he had a son—Ishmael. Ishmael was blessed, but his descendants are the Arabs of today, who are fighting the nation of Israel. Do not decide, “I’ll rush in. I have a word from the Lord, and I am going to do it.”
You have to trust God, but there are things you can do that can be an expression of faith. That action of faith is always pleasing to the Lord. When you pray for rain, do you take your umbrella to church? When you pray for something, take active steps which indicate you believe that promise of the Lord. That is exactly what the Israelites were doing at the Passover. They were believing for something. They were eating that lamb, and by faith they kept the Passover. They had their loins girded, shoes on their feet, and staff in their hand, ready to move. That is faith. They were believing for a Passover and a deliverance. They had to think it through. They were probably talking about it: “Let’s get our hiking boots on. We are going to be walking through the wilderness. What will it be like out there? We want to be sure we have enough warm clothes; it may get kind of cold out in the wilderness this time of year. We need to make this preparation and that preparation. Leave that junk behind. There are other things we will need in the wilderness. This is what we’ll take.” By faith they kept the Passover.
I suppose some things that Abraham did, such as producing Ishmael, were certainly not by faith. But God still gave him the faith to go on, and ultimately he begat Isaac, who was all that God said he was going to be to Abraham. In this day we are called upon to do the same thing. Many men have rushed ahead in an act of unbelief to make God’s promises come to pass. Our actions should be actions of faith! When we emphasize violently going ahead, making it happen, we are not talking about the energy of the flesh—we are talking about acts of faith. Weymouth’s translation expresses it well: “Faith without any corresponding actions is dead” (James 2:17–18). If someone yells, “Fire!” and we believe there is a fire, we do not just sit there and say, “Yes, I accept that there is a fire someplace. Soon I will probably smell the smoke.” No! If we believe there is a fire, we look around and quickly head for the nearest exit. Those are actions that correspond to faith. We must believe God and act accordingly.
This is what an expectant mother does when she is expecting a little one. During the pregnancy, she does what all the animals do: she gets ready for that little one. She does not say, “Well, I don’t know whether the baby will be alive or not. I don’t know what will happen to me. Why should I go ahead?” She has faith and anticipation. She has a beautiful bassinet and little three-cornered pants all ready. All that baby has to do is just arrive on the scene. Everything is ready.
That illustrates what God wants us to do. We believe something is going to happen, and we prepare for it. A thousand churches will be raised up, and some of the men who will be ministering as pastors will not even be qualified. By listening to the teaching on the tapes, they will get a better spiritual training than they could get in any seminary in the land. Our tape library will provide the finest training in Spirit-anointed teaching that has ever been devised for ministers of the gospel. It is the only thing to come forth wholly geared to a walk with God. We will also learn how to use the existing educational facilities, but only insomuch as they are practical for us to use. We will not use Bible schools to study a lot of foolish subjects that have no bearing whatsoever on walking with God. We will only study basic subjects.
As prophecies come in the services, we gear ourselves to work day and night in order to prepare for the answer to them. When God brings a word, we are going to be ready for it. When the people begin to come out of Babylon, we will have little road maps and guidelines for them to follow, saying, “This is the way you’re to go.” People may say that they would like to have a New Testament church, but they have not had the years to pray and come into the revelation of a New Testament church. How are they going to learn about it? Someone has to come along and say, “Here, look at these Scriptures. Look at this word from the Lord. This will help you to know how this New Testament church will function.”
By faith Moses kept the Passover. By faith he did it. He did not fear the wrath of the king when he forsook Egypt. When Moses was keeping that Passover, he was standing there believing God to deliver the Israelites. That deliverance was different from anything that had ever happened on the face of the earth up to that time.
We are right in the main flow, and what we do now is very important; and the way we do it is important. I am trying to plant something in your mind to show you the way you are to think. Do not come and do something just because you want to do something for the Lord or because you want to be busy. God will bless it more if you do it with faith—faith for what is coming. Suppose some books or manuals need to be bound in the printing department. Do not go ahead and do that merely for your own satisfaction. You bless every book: “Lord, I don’t know into whose hands this word will go, but I am believing God that there will be an anointing upon it.” Do it with faith. Whatever you do, you must do with faith.
The Israelites stood eating that lamb at the Passover hour, and Hebrews says that by faith Moses kept the Passover. There was that deep anticipation. It was an act of looking to God, laying hold of what God was going to do for their lives. The action of faith can never really be defined as to what it does. (I must word this carefully because someone will accuse me of false doctrine if I do not.) Would there have been a Passover if Moses had not kept that feast with faith? Would it have happened? Would there have been the judgment? He kept the Passover with the sprinkling of blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn should not touch them. There would not have been the Passover; there would not have been judgment—or would there? Would they have been judged?
Faith is a peculiar thing. Something is set in motion when people act in faith. Hebrews 11:3 explains this: By faith we understand that the worlds (ages) have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear. That word is “worlds,” but the margin points out that it is “ages.” Through faith we understand that the ages were framed by the word of God, so that what is seen did not come out of anything that appears. Let me give you an illustration. If you were studying the history of the days before the Lord Jesus Christ, you would not find any trends pointing toward the dissolution of the Roman Empire, the fall of the Jewish nation, nor the end of Greek and Roman mythology and the worship of the gods. Nothing indicated those events. What brought forth that age? A man with faith. He was filled with the Spirit of God from his mother’s womb, and he came to declare, “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The declaration of faith was the instrument God used to bring it to pass.
Things do not just happen. God sends a few men down the road to say, “It’s coming; it’s coming.” Their voicing of it makes it come. “You there!”
“Who, me Lord?”
“Yes, you. Go prophesy against Babylon.” Why? He has to have someone prophesy against it, for He is going to bring it down. It takes the action of faith, someone believing. Through faith we understand that the ages were framed by the word of God.
As you are proclaiming this living word, there may be nothing to indicate that the Kingdom is coming—nothing except a living creative word from God that declares it, creates it, and brings it into view. The ages were created by the word of God, so that what we see did not come out of anything that does appear. No trend, no cause and effect on the natural scene brings forth an age. The ages were framed by the word of God. Only a word from God brings it to pass.
Some may think the young people prophesy too much, but that is what is going to bring the Kingdom. We ought to have prophecies that are specific, however—prophecies that nail it down. “The Kingdom is coming. God is with us. The Lord is ready to move. The Lord is going to move on you.” When we prophesy it, the Lord opens the door and people come right into it.
By faith we understand that the ages have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which appear. People have changed history just by speaking a word from the Lord. I believe that in their way John Wesley and even Charles Wesley were apostles. In their day the situation in England was very similar to the situation in France. In France there was no John or Charles Wesley. As a result, a bloody French revolution broke out, the first of the major bloody revolutions, the beginning of class struggles which finally gave way to Communism. In England the same thing could have happened except for one thing: a man kept preaching the word of the Lord. He went all over England, and when he had no place to speak, when no church would open to him, he stood on his father’s grave and preached the Word. Consequently England had another kind of history. I do not mean that everything was rosy in England, but because of one man there was a turn in the tide. One man! By faith we understand that an age was created by a word from God. It is not what appears; it is that word of God that changes things. The thing that is not seen, that invisible force, comes in the word of God, and He starts changing an age!
Cause and effect always work together. The cause comes in the word of God. It makes a cycle, and eventually everything comes to pass (the effect) in the natural realm. Everything has its reality by a declaration of the Lord. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is not a physical substance, not a physical evidence, but in the spirit it is a substance as real as money in your pocket. When you speak the word of the Lord, that creates it in a spiritual substance. Then you believe God, and it takes form in the material realm.
Do not sit back and wonder if all these words will come to pass. Passover is an opportunity for you to speak the word of the Lord, to prophesy the word of the Lord. You can change all the succeeding months. It can be another climate. How will it come to pass? By prophesying the word of the Lord. By faith we understand that this age is created by the word of God. This walk today is different from all the other movements of history in that it is more clearly a divine utterance of God. There is a prophetic flow. A prophetic community is arising, and that prophetic community is enough to change the age. By faith we keep the Passover. By faith we will walk in the Kingdom. We prophesy it. We prepare our hearts for it.
I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning; yea, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is lovingkindness, and with him is plenteous redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Psalm 130:5–8. This is the well-known psalm that speaks of the watchmen on the wall, bringing the dawn. It reminds us of the story in mythology of the god who could sing and play his harp so beautifully. In order to make the sun come up, way back in those days of antiquity, he went out every morning, and sang and played his harp. Immediately the sun was intrigued and it would rise. So every morning it was his job to bring on a new day with his song.
We are those who wait for the morning; and while we do it, we are singing our psalms; we are prophesying our prophecies. We are making that day dawn. We are bringing a sunrise, even though it was prepared from of old. His going forth is from ancient times, yet we know that we bring it into our own life and into our own experience as we literally sing it and prophesy it into being. We bring it into the lives and experiences of others also, by singing and prophesying the word of the Lord until it comes into being.
I feel the sign of judgment in my hand, and I feel the anointing to prophesy. If we make the prophecy not just an ecstatic utterance, but an utterance of faith, according to our proportion of faith, we can prophesy a whole new era, a whole new period, a whole new level into view.
We ought to prophesy the release of finances for the apostolic company. We ought to prophesy Babylon down. We ought to speak the word of the Lord. You say, “It has already been prophesied.” That is all right; we cannot prophesy it too much. We will continue to speak the word of the Lord and have it come forth. Although there are many things we do not understand about prophesying, it is a fact that the things we have seen manifested during the past twenty years have been those things which were constantly prophesied. And they came to pass according to the proportion of faith in the people to prophesy the word of the Lord.
When the order of the service is that of a prophet’s meeting, I think the prophesying should come forth bombastically. We should prophesy with faith, and the whole congregation should amen it. In this we will see a release.
Prophesy the release of the apostolic ministry. Prophesy everyone’s release. Prophesy the release of the apostolic company. Prophesy the release of the churches. Prophesy the release of the money for the Living Word Building. Prophesy every hindrance taken out of the way. Prophesy new churches into being. Bring the people of God out of Babylon and into the churches that are going to be built. Things are going to happen because you have faith to make them happen.
The revealed will of God is the first phase of a happening. The second phase takes place when the people of God believe it and begin to exercise themselves within the means by which the grace and the power of God are released into a situation. For instance, we believe that by His stripes we were healed, so we anoint the sick with oil and lay hands upon them, and they are healed in the name of the Lord because the initiative of faith is there to follow what God has revealed.
We know that we are going to leave Egypt with the spoils, and that God is bringing judgment upon all the gods of Egypt, because, regardless of the sermon topics, the prophecies have continually spoken that this is the hour of release and of deliverance.
Ye shall not cease until ye have put an end to the confusion that is among God’s people. Ye shall not let them wander as sheep upon the mountainside, but they shall hear His voice, and they shall be called into the fold. Yea, it is the hour that the Lord doth not allow His people to be made a prey, for He has said, “Behold, they that seek after My face, shall I not give them shepherds after My own heart? And I shall bring them out of the days of their confusion, out of the days in which they have been exploited, and they shall become the true flock of the Lord that shall feast upon the goodness of the Lord and shall perform all of His will in the earth.”
“According to the word that thou shalt speak, the Lord shall judge Babylon. According to the word that thou shalt speak, He shall loose the captives and many shall be brought forth, even in this day. Many shall be brought out of Babylon, and the clutches thereof, into a liberty of the Spirit, in the name of the Lord.”
“Let this be the hour in which Satan’s head doth feel the heel of the remnant standing upon it. Let this be the hour in which the remnant doth call for judgment upon Egypt—not one judgment, nor two, nor five, but let it be the tenfold judgment—until, with a high hand, the people of God are released, until Egypt is broken and her power is brought down. Until Babylon is judged, let there be a continual crying for judgment going up from the mouth of the remnant.”
“Behold, the Lord shall speak before His army because it is exceedingly great. He shall come as a new revelation unto you. Many have not seen Him as Joshua saw Him in the plains before Jericho, but thou shalt see Him with the sword drawn in His hand and thou shalt be among His army to speak His word unto the ends of the earth.”
“Even in this hour the Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and we are the violent who shall take it by force. The people of the Kingdom shall have that violent faith to take the Kingdom. The Kingdom of heaven shall have a people that shall go forth to judge the things in Babylon, to bring down the things of hypocrisy, to bring down the things of the old order and bring in the new things that the Lord would have in this hour.”
“For thou art no longer slaves or beggars in the house of thy God. He has given thee the riches of Egypt and all the possessions of Babylon. Thou dost have the dominion in every realm, and thou art to possess it. Thou shalt take it in this hour.”
“The hour for the manifestation of the promises is upon you. The enemy rages because he knows his time is short. Let not the promises of the Lord be as a cloud that hovers about thee for a long season. Let thy faith lay hold upon them, for the execution of the promises is thine. It is the beginning of days for thee. Now are the days that you possess the promises in His name. Rise up and prophesy again against Babylon! Thou shalt have the abundance thereof, in the name of the Lord.”
“Is it not written that thou art heirs of the Kingdom, and joint heirs with Christ Jesus? And what shalt thou inherit? Thou shalt surely inherit the Kingdom. And more than the Kingdom of heaven, thou shalt inherit all the riches of this world. Hath not the Lord said, ‘The gold and the silver are mine’? Yea, He shall pour out a multitude of blessings unto thee. Let thy faith be great to believe for all things, for wherever the sole of thy foot shall tread, it shall be thine according to thy faith.”
“Let your mouth proclaim what ye shall be in the days to come, for the Lord would give it unto thee in this day. The word of thy mouth shall speak forth, and there shall be an anointing: on one hand it shall bring forth the life, and on the other it shall bring forth judgment in those who hear it. All that man has wrought with his own hands shall come to naught, for the Lord would blow upon it. Let your words speak forth the glory of the Lord, for in these end days the Lord would bring down that which is an offense to His sight.”
“We prophesy against the Nephilim power in America’s banking system—the money changers who have held back the money from the apostolic company. We bring them down in Jesus’ name.”
“Though they build high like the eagles, and make their nests among the stars, the Lord of Hosts shall bring them down. The high thing that has exalted itself against the knowledge of God and raised itself up to stand to oppress the people of God, let the judgments of the Lord be spoken against it now. The oppression that has kept the people back, and even caused the finances to be difficult to obtain, let the thing be broken, and let prosperity come to the house of the Lord.”
“This is the Kingdom of our God. Even this night we are not governed by the calendar of this world, but by the word of the Lord and the present day of bringing in His Kingdom. The ax shall be put to every tree that has not born righteousness unto our God. This night it shall come down; it shall die. The Lord thy God never planted it. It shall come down. Babylon shall have no peace. But the word of the Lord shall be in the hearts of His people, and they shall speak it. Even this night they shall know that there is a prophet of God in the land and that the word of God is against Babylon. Bring it down!”
“We prophesy unto the Body of Christ this night a transformation by the renewing of the mind. No more shalt thou look upon the apostle of God as the pastor of churches. No more shalt thou look upon him as one who is hindered. Thou shalt envision him, in thy faith, as one who shall meet many hearts, who shall go through the earth as a shepherd feeding the flocks of God, as an apostle who shall speak a word and it shall be. Rejoice, for God hath judged the judgment of the apostles and prophets on Babylon. The apostle shall be free to speak that word, both of faith and of judgment, in this hour.”
“We prophesy against thee, thou mother of harlots, and against all of thy children. We prophesy that thy kingdom will come down and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ there will be a liberation of every child of God who would come out from behind thy walls. We proclaim a liberty to those who are walking in the shackles of old order. We prophesy a liberty to the people of God that we may come forth as the anointed of God, that we may go forth as the army of the Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ.”
“Is this not the generation which the Lord hath spoken of? Thy days shall be counted from henceforth and thou shalt see the systematic destruction of Babylon. An army of the Lord goeth forth upon the land. Surely if the creation longeth for this day when the sons of God are manifested upon the earth and the daughters of Zion come forth with the psalm to deliver it, shall it not be brought forth in thy heart? There shall be no little faith which shall defer it in any way. The Lord shall bring it forth through the people in His Body in this hour.”
“There hath been in the house of the Lord a burden here and a burden there, an intercessor here and an intercessor there; but we prophesy that this Body shall be a Body of intercession. There shall be one burden for the apostolic company, there shall arise from every heart one cry unto the Lord that will loose the apostles and prophets!”