This message comes by revelation because it is speaking of the coming days of revelation. God is continually bringing new light out of the Word to us. And for this we’re very thankful.
“Father, I desire that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, although the world has not known Thee, yet I have known Thee; and these have known that Thou didst send Me; and I have made Thy name known to them, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou didst love Me may be in them, and I in them.” John 17:24–26.
“In My Father’s house are many dwelling places (King James reads “mansions”); if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” John 14:2, 3.
This idea is clearly conveyed in these Scriptures that the ultimate purpose of Christ is to bring you into a fellowship with Him. The word “fellowship” is actually too weak; He wants to bring you to where He is. He says, “I go to prepare a place for you.” Forget the idea of “mansions.” He’s going to prepare a spiritual place. You would accept a mansion and cobblestones of gold, for it would be worth a lot, but it’s not as valuable as what He is talking about. He’s going to prepare a place for you.
Where is Jesus? At the right hand of the Father, above all rule or authority, above every name that is named in heaven and on earth. Dominion and authority are His. Who can understand the wonderful place of exaltation that He has? He says, “I’m preparing a place for you, that where I am there you may be also.” In other words, “I want you to come up higher. I want you to slowly grow until you come into the Kingdom awareness, until you are where I am, that you may behold My glory.”
“I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me. And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity (the margin reads “into a unit”). John 17:20–23a.
Do you see where it’s heading? Individuality has to end because that’s the plan of God. Disunity between individuals can absolutely not exist in the perfect spirit world of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We’re even incapable of understanding the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. People kick around the doctrines about God being one, about the triune God or the Trinity, and they don’t know what they’re talking about. We’ve not reached the place of understanding that would enable us to comprehend the wonderful unity that exists between the Father and the Son, making them one: Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in us. We used to say there was a distinction in personality, but I don’t know how we can even say that honestly. How distinct is the Father from the Son? When you see the Son, you see the Father. “He that has seen Me, has seen the Father,” Jesus said. I’m not preaching oneness or any other extreme doctrine; I’m just trying to show you that God is perfecting us into a unit. We can’t understand that either, but we’re surely going to let God do it! He’s going to let His glory rest upon us and we will find ourselves welded into one unit.
Jesus said, “I want to bring them up where I am.” Jesus, we want to be where You are. We want to dwell where You dwell. When John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” one of the disciples went over to Jesus and asked, “Master, where dwellest Thou?” Jesus said, “Come and see.” The disciples spent a long time trying to find out where Jesus lived: by the side of the road, out in the open, in the wilderness place, in Gethsemane.
One day He broke their hearts. He said, “Now the time is here that I have to go. I’m going to prepare a place for you. Nathaniel, what do you look for? James, John, what are you looking for? You wanted to dwell with Me. Philip, have you been with Me so long a time and you haven’t known Me?” I don’t think we know one another either. We’re still striving to come out of that level on which we know one another after the flesh. We’re trying to drop the knowledge we have of one another on a human level. One of these days we’ll say it indeed, and it will ring forth throughout the Body, “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh. Though we have known Him after the flesh, yet we know Him so no longer” (II Corinthians 5:16). How do we know Thee now, Christ? We know You, where You are. You will reveal Your glory to us, and You’ll make us one.
It sounds ethereal and far out, and if we had not already had so many practical prophecies, I would have reason to think you will never grasp this, but I think you will. It’s the day of oneness. It’s the day of one Body. He’s changing everything. The individual is being swallowed up in the whole. He’s come into the mature representation of sons, where there is the interdependence, the inner life and the unity and oneness that the Lord has brought by a baptism of fire until the individual plane has really ceased. This is true.
The day has come for us to face this. The oneness of the Body is the most important thing God is bringing forth in the earth today. Everything is ceasing on the individual plane. We’re becoming one. Paul writes in I Corinthians 13:11, 12: “Once I was a child and I spake as a child and I thought as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things. So now we see in part, but then we’ll know, even as we’re also known.” This is speaking of the love and the oneness that will come, until it’s not just a partial knowledge or a partial understanding of each other, but that which is perfect.
You don’t look at a child and say, “I don’t want this child any more; I want a man so I’ll get rid of the child.” You’ll never get a man that way. But when the child grows up and becomes a man, you say, “This man doesn’t think as a child or react as a child. Where did the child go?” The child is gone. We look at the man and see that his eyes are still blue and his hair is still curly, and his features may remind us of the way he looked as a child. But he’s not a child.
What we’ve actually seen in the past is the immature representation of the Body of Christ. It was still mingled with individuality. But the Lord is praying for us, “Father, I pray that they’ll be where I am, I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into a unit, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me. Father, I desire that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am.” John 17:23, 24a.
I’m going to live where He lives. I’m going to have an awareness of His Kingdom. I’m going to sit on the throne with Him, not in self-exaltation, but because I want to help execute the will of the King. I want to see the kingdoms of this world become His Kingdom. I want to see everything that is an offense driven out. Master, I want to be where You are. I want to come up through that humiliation, through that work of the cross, where I can sit on the throne with You.
There can’t be any place on the throne for you unless you take a place on the cross with Him, too. You’ll have to go that route, but I don’t have to tell you that; you’re not escaping it anyway. You may not be taking it too gracefully, but you’re dying. Whether you die like a lamb or like a squealing pig, it doesn’t make any difference—you’re dying. The work of the cross is being done. And now the Lord is saying to you, “Come on up into the authority.” He’s prophesying that to us today. He’s had a bunch of independent scalawags to deal with, but He’s delivering them and causing them to flow together into one Body.
He gave us His glory. He prophesied to us for several years that the glory had returned. We looked to see some great manifestation of a blazing fire and we found it was working in us. His glory came as a baptism of fire and began to burn out the dross. He’d given us His glory that we might all become one, and we wist not what He did with us. We didn’t understand what He was saying, “And the glory which Thou hast given Me, I have given to them that they may be one just as We are one.” We’ve experienced it and we are still experiencing it. Thousands more will come into the Walk who will experience it the same as we do. They, too, will come through the fire, the fire that burns within, the baptism of fire that He experienced first.
God called the fire “glory,” and we didn’t understand it. But the glory came and the dross was consumed and upon our shoulders is resting an authority that is different than before.
To grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes… Isaiah 61:3a. When there’s nothing but ashes, then He will put the garland on you—the garland of a winner. The fire burned up the dross. Come on up to the throne now. I knew the Lord had something for us in that sanctified hotfoot He was giving us. Now He comes to give us the garland—the garland of a winner, an overcomer. He that overcomes, I will grant to sit with Me on My throne (Revelation 3:21). That’s good enough.
Lord, we reach up into that authority, not audaciously, but because we can’t draw away from it. We can’t draw away from our responsibilities. We have followed Thee through the fire; now we must sit with Thee on the throne. Because You have dealt with us in the days of our infancy, now we must take the responsibility of spiritual maturity. Upon us rests responsibility for the gospel of the Kingdom, to go forth and become the instruments in the hand of the Spirit to bring forth the manifestation of His rule and reign, to see everything come down and everything that causes an offense removed. If there’s anything more to be done in us, help Yourself, Lord. We know You will anyway, but what we’re trying to do is submit to it gracefully. Amen.
“Every principality and power will be brought down under our hand. The thing that was wrought in Christ Jesus is going to be manifested through the sons of God who are coming forth. This word talks about the maturity of the Church. The word of fire comes and melts down all of these individuals into one Body, and we have the Body of Christ coming forth. We often use the Scripture which says that we’ve been set in the Body as it pleases Him, applying it usually to the individual local bodies, when actually we’ve been set in this Body of Christ, in this apostolic company, as it pleased Him.
“The manifold wisdom of God will be made known through the Church. God is going to give us the wisdom to know how to bring down the principalities and powers, how to exercise the authority which is given to us. This is a real key.
“Our big enemy now is our mind. We must be able to put into effect that which Christ has already wrought within our hearts. It’s already done within us, but now we must be able to appropriate the faith to put it into action. So He’s going to give us the wisdom to do it. How does the wisdom come? The manifold wisdom of God will be made known through the Church, to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
“The fire is coming to burn out everything that stops us from being one, from having the common vision of the Kingdom that Christ has laid before this apostolic company. He comes to bring down every other kingdom that we have tried to set up in our church, or in our life, or wherever, so that through the Church, this manifold Body of Christ, through the prophetic company God is bringing forth in this Walk, those mysteries will be released. You and I now must know how to exercise, how to administrate this authority to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.”
“The Lord is showing us what true authority is and who the Father is. It’s just beginning to dawn upon me: Why would God be called the Father if it were not for the fact that He is the Head of a great family, and we are the family of God that Ephesians 2 talks about? Eventually love will become the perfect bond of unity, not some abstract thing, but a very real thing of sonship, of a family.
“The Lord showed me that when Satan is raging on this earth, we will not be raged at on that earthly plane, with earthly thoughts, earthly feelings, personal problems, with fantasies, and everything that pertains to the human plane, but we will be those who have ascended to the throne of God, and are worshiping around the throne. It was very awesome because I saw not only the flame of God, but the very righteousness of God, and this righteousness is the thing He is bringing forth.
“The ones who opposed Moses were men of a depraved mind. They were unrighteous. There was a bond of inquity, something so perverse in them that they couldn’t let it go. It always leads to individuality, to division.
“Daniel speaks of the throne of God being a flame. When you stand at the throne of God, it’s the very fire of God Himself, and it has to purge you when you stand there. When the two witnesses spoke, fire proceeded out of their mouth. This fire is creating such a righteousness and a purity within us. Luke 7 tells us that because the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the baptism of John they rejected the purposes of God concerning themselves. Every time there’s a new age and a new generation coming, God brings a baptism, for there must be something worked deeply within us.”
“The deception of the age has its power in individualism. Everything started in the Lord and though the enemy has created many Ishmaels, everything is reverting back to the Lord, for the power to deceive is taken away from the enemy. The greater the flow of God is in you, the less easily you will be deceived, because your heart is centered upon the Lord. The truths of the Kingdom, the truths of God’s plan, have been reserved unto a unified people. You will not receive it as an individual, as a rebel, because you don’t have the spirit of that oneness with God. As you see your brother as Christ’s choosing, you love him more than yourself. Then you begin to get the compassion and the love in God’s great plan. It’s still hidden, but it’s going to open up. Praise God.”
These remarks are good. They are perceptive and deep because the Lord opened up a realm of revelation to us and the spirit of revelation has been imparted and is resting upon everyone. The Word is beginning to open up to us on a new plane.