We are breaking out of old ways of thinking. This is a new order; it is a new day! What a tragedy it would be to live it as old wineskins with old order thinking, to be unable to be flexible through the times.
And this, knowing the season, that already it is time for you to awake out of sleep: for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed. The night is far spent, and the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk becomingly, as in the day; not in revelling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof. Romans 13:11–14.
Those are fighting words! We couldn’t find a more appropriate Scripture in the whole New Testament to pinpoint what God is laying before us today. It is time to wake up and time to move; it is time to make haste to escape out of Sodom. I am concerned about people who have a slow rate of growth. I want no stragglers. No one will be left behind, but I am concerned that your diligence to be found in the Lord and in His will should be doubled. Now is the season: it is time for us to wake out of sleep, time for us to move right in. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Verse 12.
And Simon’s wife’s mother was holden with a great fever; and they besought him for her. And he stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her: and immediately she rose up and ministered unto them. Luke 4:38, 39. The thing that has been on us is like a satanic fever to incapacitate us, to slow us down. It was like a spiritual fever, draining away our strength and using too much of our spiritual energies to recover and recuperate. The Lord spoke to me, “The people are like Simon’s wife’s mother, sick with a great fever.” Today the Lord Jesus is standing over us and rebuking the fever; rebuking that which has hindered the people of the Lord, rebuking that which drains away strength and brings confusion, everything that seems to drain away that surplus that God wants in His service.
The Word says, “Immediately she arose and ministered to them,” and that is what we are going to do. Today it is the day to believe God to cast off the fever and get up and start ministering. It doesn’t say how she did it, but she started ministering. For her to be delivered was to go to work, and that is what we are to do. There are many things we must enter into with all of our heart. We don’t have time for anything else; killing time is for those who want a dead life. But we must redeem the time; the days are evil and we want to live fully His will.
I think a great deal about the way God deals with people. The Gospel of Mark has key words which are repeated often. In the first chapter you will find the word “straightway” several times. Sometimes it is translated “immediately”; but it is the same word in the Greek. Do you know what straightway means? Right now. Immediately. With a sense of urgency. When Jesus called the disciples, they threw aside everything to follow the Lord (Mark 1:18). We sometimes weigh discipleship with the cost of being a disciple. But the real mark of discipleship is the urgency with which we respond to the Lord.
Some believers ultimately give the Lord what He is after, in order to get Him to stop beating them, chastening them. I don’t want to be a reluctant disciple: slow to follow, slow to give Him what He wants. When the Lord speaks, I want to respond to it so fast and do it quickly, because in these days there is an urgency on every word that God gives. We get advertisements in the mail, stamped, “Urgent: reply requested,” to get us to open the envelope—it doesn’t really mean urgent at all. But the Lord is marking a lot of things urgent, and they are urgent. He is saying to us today what He did out in the field of Samaria at the edge of town. By a little well, He had been talking with a woman and she had gone back into the city. There He stopped and spoke words that probably didn’t have much meaning to the disciples at the time. They could see the wheat fields bending with the breeze, bowing their heavy heads.
He looked over the field and said, Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, that they are white already unto harvest. He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. For herein is the saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye have not labored: others have labored, and ye are entered into their labor. John 4:35–38. Let us look, also. We don’t have much time.
Through strange things God has prepared people’s hearts; you never meet a person casually but what he is open to talk about the dangerous day in which we are living. But I believe the radiance of Christ coming through, the quickness with which you respond to what God is doing and saying in the earth, and the carefulness with which you maintain a spiritual plane will be a protection to men and women alike. We shall witness to devil-possessed people, people who are trapped in the worst kinds of lusts. The chains that snare humanity are more vile than at any time, and yet there is something that God is doing. We know there are the terrors, but we are those end-time witnesses.
Don’t say there are four more months—it is ready now. Something rests upon my spirit in a sense of urgency. Whenever I preach to you, you are aware that you are sharing something that I am living. I am experiencing it. I realize that you would rather have it so; you would rather come into something that is really alive. There are many Scriptures about the end time, but what we do about them now is important.
I have thought so much about the days of Elijah, and in I Kings 19:15–21, we read: The Lord said to him (Elijah), Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, thou shalt anoint Hazael to be king over Syria; and Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel; and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room. And it shall come to pass that him that escapeth from the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay; and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. Yet will I leave me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.
So he departed thence, and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing, with twelve of oxen before him, and he with the twelfth:… Twelve yoke of oxen! That is not just one little ox going down the row. Don’t get the idea that Elisha was some little weak man. I think he was a man who matched Elijah. I picture him as a big old bruiser following that plow, handling twelve yoke of oxen.
And Elijah passed over unto him, and cast his mantle upon him. And he left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee. And he said unto him, Go back again; for what have I done to thee? And he returned from following him, and took the yoke of oxen, and slew them, and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen (the wood from the plow), and gave unto the people, and they did eat. Then he arose, and went after Elijah, and ministered unto him.
Now that is burning your bridges behind you! In this walk we sometimes look for a way to get out of a situation. “Well, don’t close the door on it, we don’t know how things are going to go.” Oh, in the name of the Lord, slam the door and nail it! Burn the bridge! The phrase, “burning your bridges behind you,” comes from Caesar’s Gallic Wars. He went in to face an enemy that had continually harassed Rome, and when he crossed the Rubicon River, he burned the bridges behind them. His soldiers looked back and saw the bridges burning. He was saying, “You have no way to retreat. You can’t get out of this alive, unless you win.” We think the same way. We won’t get out of this alive, unless we are more than conquerors though Jesus Christ, because I think that is about the way it will be in the tribulation period, anyway.
Which way do we go? One answer: where the enemy is. Whatever you are doing, Satan, that is where we will be: pursuing after you to bring down, in the name of the Lord, that which the enemy is bringing up. We shall move like Elisha of old, a mantle thrown on our shoulders. Elisha left a pretty big operation to follow Elijah and minister to him. Then what was he? A big old guy pouring water over the hands of the prophet so he could wash before he ate. That is the only reputation he had for years, “Elisha, who poured water on the hands of Elijah.”
We don’t have the sense of values the world has. I would rather pour water on the hands of Elijah any day, than to be the head of the biggest operation and the biggest corporation in the land! We have decided what is really important. The rest of the world is esteeming only their own self-importance and projection in the world. We are thinking of only one thing: the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the coming King. We are seeking first the Kingdom. Something burns within our hearts, “This is what we want, this is what we value. Nothing else in the world is as important as what God is doing and bringing forth in the earth right at this present hour.”
Elisha did a beautiful thing. I can imagine what he did: he probably picked up a big double tree (or single tree—whatever he had hooked to the oxen), pitched one, and hit an old ox in the head, staggered it, and cut its throat. Then he drags it over, and starts building a fire. He gathers the friends around. “We are having a good-by barbeque,” and they eat that old ox. You see him get up and kiss mama, kiss papa. “Oh, it’s time to go.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going after Elijah, the old prophet. You remember—the one wearing a leather girdle.” He started down the road to find out where he was, walking into the night. “Good-by, old life; the plow is burned, the oxen are eaten, and there is a new day waiting for me.”
Oh, God bring it today. We say within our hearts, “The old passes. The new day dawns, and how constrained we are in spirit to enter into it with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It is time to take the Kingdom!”