I feel the strength and the unity of the brethren, and I know that this is something so wrought by God that they are indivisible in their dedication to walk in one spirit. It is fantastic.
One thing you learn in war is to first gain the area of supremacy, so that as the different divisions move in, after the marines land and the aircraft has softened up the area, you will have the enemy on the run and completely shatter their defenses and strongholds. You take the aggressive role and then continue the aggressive role with the land troops. And this is what God tells us to do. Before you can get down to the basic function of ministering to people, you have to bind the strong man in order to gain the blessing and supremacy over the principalities and powers that would come against you. When you have taken that dominion and loosed that area to God, you move right in and minister.
This was done here so thoroughly that I commend you for it. When the date is set for a conference in a specific area, that group should pray and seek the face of the Lord. Then I think we could see—even in three days—a miracle worked again and again. We have seen something so blessed imposed upon us here that we really received new guidelines and a new level of Kingdom teaching we have not had heretofore. This revelation teaching is what we really want. It is the apostolic word that we become addicted to, as they were in the early Church, and as we walk in it, everything blends together. I am very much encouraged that we look forward to the next time we have together.
In this message we are going to talk about a beard. I once wore a beard. It was beautiful but I had to cut it off. I did so because it offended one of the elders in the church and for his sake I shaved it. I did it quite reluctantly because I liked it. I told him, “Brother, to keep you from stumbling, I’m shaving off my beard, but when you get over your foolish prejudice and immaturity, I’m going to grow it again.”
Psalm 133 speaks of Aaron’s beard. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, coming down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard, coming down upon the edge of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, coming down upon the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord commanded the blessing—life forever.
This Psalm was sung and it was one of the songs of ascent. It is very significant. The next Psalm tells about the greeting of the night watchers. As the pilgrims were coming up towards Jerusalem to one of the three feasts they were required to attend, they sang these songs of ascent. As they ascended Mount Zion and saw the night watchers standing on the walls, they would sing the song we sing: “Behold, bless ye the Lord all ye servants of the Lord, who by night stand in the house of the Lord.” Visualize all the pilgrims, all the children of Israel coming up toward Jerusalem, walking together and singing, “Oh how good, how pleasant it is for the brethren to dwell together in unity!” The flow of life comes when there is unity.
When discord arises, it is like a cancerous growth that robs the Body of its life. It acts like a constriction that prevents an organ from functioning. It must be removed, for there, in the unity of the people, the Lord has commanded the blessing—even life evermore.
A flow of God’s Spirit comes when we are determined to be united. It becomes a matter of what is important to you. Is the unity of the Body more important than your feelings or opinions about a certain matter? Even if you feel you have received a great injustice or a wrong, is it worth what happens to the Body when you destroy the unity by your own division or by rising up in rebellion over a situation? I don’t think it is. We are going to learn, as we go along, that real love does not mark offenses, or take into account a wrong suffered, as I Corinthians 13 teaches us. We will come to the place where it is no longer important that we have been injured, or insulted, or neglected. What is important is that we dwell together in unity.
The Psalm sings on: “It is like the oil that came upon the head.” Here we have a mystical picture of Christ. Of course, if you want to see it as from the beginning of the Church, it still comes first upon the Head of Christ, for the word “Christ” means the anointed one. The word “Christian” (they were first called Christians at Antioch) means the anointed one. “Kristos” is the Greek form of the Hebrew word “Messiah” which means anointed. He was the Messiah; He was the Christ. In a sense, we too are the Messiahs of the world. We are the anointed ones. We are the Christ, because Christ dwelling within us is the Anointed One who ministers for salvation, for redemption, for all things. Isn’t it significant that the same anointing which was upon Christ was seen upon those believers also, and so they were called Christians.
The anointing comes upon the head and begins to flow down upon his beard—a nice oily, greasy beard. And it keeps on flowing down, over his robes, down to the hem of his garment. This is exactly what God is doing for us today. The anointing is flowing down and great is the anointing that is coming to the Body as we approach the close of the Church age and the beginning of the Kingdom. We see one last great thrust as one age ends and another age begins, not with glorious observation, but secretly, almost silently. The only thing that will be heard in this time will be the whines and sighs and groans of a dying age. But the Kingdom will come without observation. It will steal in upon the world like a thief in the night. Already it has begun, already it is coming forth gloriously. The Christ is coming forth within us.
Again it is the anointing of the Lord, and because the anointing of the Lord is here, the first thing it produces is the unity of the Body. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! The anointing that is coming to the Walk and to the people in it is not an anointing upon individuals to go out and do their own thing, but an anointing upon people to lose their individuality and be swallowed up in the oneness of the Body. This is what God is concerned about, and it is the purpose and the function of all ministries to produce it. I think the day will come that when any spirit of division comes against us, we will only have to stand and see the ministries rebuke it and it will disappear. When the Spirit of the Lord comes upon us, He gives us His glory that we may all be one, as He and the Father are one (John 17:22). The unity comes about by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and in the same way division comes about by the assault of demonic spirits.
We cannot look upon it anymore as a matter of personality clashes or of people not being able to relate well with one another. We realize that this is not true. We know people of entirely different backgrounds who would lay their lives down for one another. We see the intellectuals as well as those who are uneducated. People of completely diverse backgrounds as to culture or race are all swallowed up in oneness.
This unity of the Spirit must be created in us by the anointing of the Lord. It is not something that is man-made. The ecumenical movement is Satan’s Ishmael, designed to produce in the world a rejection of the true Body, for the true Body will seem to be causing division. We will be the downfall of Babylon. We will receive those who are being divided from Babylon, and Babylon will say, “Look, they are causing division,” when in reality we are the true ecumenical people. We all want to dwell together in one Body. Christ is not divided. Jesus said of the house of Satan that a house divided against itself cannot stand, that Satan does not cast out Satan, and a devil does not cast out a devil (Matthew 12:24–26). He was pointing out that there will be unity and that there will also be an ecumenical movement sponsored by the devil himself. It has come and that is exactly what it is. The churches that deny the deity of Jesus Christ, His atoning work, His resurrection, and the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, all come together and say, “See, Christ is not divided.” They don’t even have Christ! They don’t even believe in Him. The ecumenical movement means absolutely nothing except that it is part of the great whore riding the beast described in Revelation.
The true Body is beginning to come together. And it does not come together by an ecumenical movement, by the consent of men or by their conventions; it comes together by the Holy Spirit of fire welding us into one, until we are not an organization, but a living organism, one Body fitly joined together and compacted by that which the Spirit supplies. It is the Holy Spirit who produces this unity. When you begin to feel any hostility towards your brother, any form of competition or jealousy, you should immediately begin to seek the Lord about it. Where God’s people are concerned, this is demonically inspired. It is unnatural, a state of sickness that exists in the realm of spirit. Look to the Lord for that deliverance to come immediately and quickly in His name.
Seek for that anointing of the Spirit which runs down over the beard. How good and how pleasant it is for the brethren to dwell together in unity. How do we receive it? Look to Ephesians 4:1–3: I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk… People often say, “The Walk! Where do you get that name?” It’s Biblical, isn’t it? The Bible speaks about those of “this way” and how we walk before the Lord. Modern Christianity seems to simply profess a faith or adhere to a certain set of doctrines. But with Christ it was something very practical. He opens the door for us to walk with Him. If it isn’t a walk with God, it’s nothing at all.
Long ago the Lord showed me that doctrines are dead things apart from Christ, that He is the way and the truth and the life. There is no truth apart from that living truth in Him. Whenever we try to deal with truth as if it were something abstract, we will ask as Pilate did, “What is truth?” He found that he didn’t know what to do with it. He didn’t even understand it. He could only ask, “What is it?” Jesus Himself is the truth. Jesus is the way. Jesus is the life. Can you preach salvation without Christ being the way?
Churches have a way of chopping the Bible up into little doctrines. For example, they say, “We believe in the doctrine of Holy Communion.” The early Church didn’t make a doctrine of it; Christ was present in the Communion. Christ was the Communion. They make a doctrine of resurrection and of eschatology, the doctrine of final things. The resurrection is more than an event scheduled for a certain time. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Without Him there is nothing. “Well,” you say, “aren’t we preaching the Kingdom?” We are preaching the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That was the message from the beginning and it hasn’t changed. “Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” Never divorce your teaching from the Lord. Never divorce doctrines from Christ Himself. He is all, He is everything—exalt Him in it.
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:1–6. This is the chapter which speaks about the apostles and prophets and ministries to the Church. It deals with God bringing the Church into maturity so that we be no more children tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. It says we are going to speak the truth in love and grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head.
This marvelous chapter begins by saying, “This is the way it happens: one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Is He talking about the baptism in water? No, he is not. Whenever Paul refers to baptism in his epistles, with the exception of a dialogue about water baptism in I Corinthians 15, he is speaking of something else. When he writes in I Corinthians 12:13: For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, he is talking about the fire that welds us together—the baptism of fire.
From the beginning the word was, “Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11). When John the Baptist said that, he was not talking about water baptism. This does not mean that they did not believe in it. When the Gentiles had received the baptism of the Spirit (Acts 10), Peter said, “Who can forbid water that these should be baptized?” That was a reversal of the normal procedure. The baptism in water begins as an identification with Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, to bring us to a walk in newness of life. Believe me, water baptism is going to be restored to a purity, a forceful experience that people have not known before. But we’re not dealing with that; we are dealing with this one baptism whereby we become one Body. We must be diligent to preserve that unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace—always working at it.
Someone says, “I can’t agree with my brother.” “Why can’t you agree?” “Well, he believes one way and I believe another way.” Isn’t that amazing! Later in this chapter Paul says that the apostles and prophets and all the foundational ministries will minister until we all come to the unity of the faith. Every one of us can maintain the unity of the Spirit now. The unity of the faith may take a little while, for we may disagree on doctrines and ideas.
One of the classic examples of this, I think, is the doctrine of eternal security. If I had time to bring the teaching on it, you would see that both sides are absolutely right and absolutely wrong. The doctrine of eternal security is an absolutely valid doctrine when you reach a certain level of spiritual maturity. The word will confirm that. When you reach that level, you won’t sin. But for the babes, “My little children, I write these things to you that you sin not, but if a man sin (in a state of infancy they can sin), we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (I John 2:1). So both views are right and both are wrong.
As we come to this new day, we should put aside our doctrines, because the Lord is going to take the seals off the Book and we will begin to understand things we have never understood before. Let’s bury the hatchet (and not in our brother’s skull, either) and forget about all the disunity. Endeavor diligently to walk in the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Strive for it. If we do that and we are submissive to the Lord, what will happen? He will lead us right on into the unity of the faith. Believe me, He will. He will bring us into it until we all see eye to eye and we will speak the same thing and not break ranks, nor thrust one another through when the Lord brings again Zion. This is the unity we strive for.
That doesn’t mean that everyone is going to believe just like I believe. To tell you the truth, I have discovered so many areas of ignorance, and I am very careful not to preach about them. When I was very, very young, I knew all the answers. There wasn’t a vision or a dream of Daniel that I couldn’t interpret perfectly. Now I preach what the Lord reveals as the truth. The people hear it and they know it is true. We have been plagued in the house of God by arm-chair prophets and teachers who speculate from commentaries, instead of bringing a word from the Lord. But that day is ended. We speak that which we do know. The Lord is blessing and the truth will be restored.
I don’t think we really know yet all that we are supposed to believe. However, I believe even what I don’t know to believe yet. I have a faith in my heart that God will bring the truth and confirm it and I’ll be able to believe it. I think that the truths yet to be received by the Body probably constitute about ninety percent of the gospel of the Kingdom. At this point, I doubt if we know even ten percent of what we’re going to preach and what we’re going to know. This is where we stand even after about twenty years of revelation that first made the Word live, that established divine order and the pattern and guidelines for us.
I think we have just begun to move into what we are to know in the Lord. You may not take too kindly the fact that we have established our ignorance! The Word says that knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth. And a little knowledge sometimes puffeth up even more. But when you have a little more knowledge then you know how little you know. Then you don’t become puffed up about it.
We have not arrived at the unity of the faith, but we are contending earnestly for the Lord to restore the faith that was once delivered to the saints. We contend for it. As we are reaching for it, we are not allowing ourselves to be divided nor to argue over what one man sees and what another man sees. We are contending for the unity of the Spirit that will hold us together in the name of the Lord, and this we must absolutely walk in.
As we come into a ministry, certain things are emphasized to us by the Spirit according to what God wants to minister through us. We are very much like the five blind men of Bombay. They had never seen an elephant, so an elephant was brought to them. One came up and slapped the side of the elephant. “Ah,” he said, “I can see it clearly; an elephant is very much like a wall!” Another one reached down and felt the elephant’s leg. “Oh,” he said, “I see it even more clearly. It’s not a wall, but an elephant is very much like a tree.” Another came up to the rear of the elephant and took hold of his tail. He said, “You men are blind. I see it clearly. An elephant is much like a rope.” Another came to the front side and patted and felt a big floppy ear. “It’s weird,” he said, “you men have even lost your sense of touch. An elephant is much like a leaf.” One more came up and he grabbed the trunk. “What fools you all are. It is very plain, an elephant is like a snake!”
When we come into the Walk with God and begin to move in the Lord, it is so easy to see various aspects of the members of the Body as they are joined together. Don’t get to arguing over it. Just believe the Lord to open your perception and maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The other unities will come along in time. We just believe the Lord, for He is creating something spiritual. It is not coming through our heads, but through our spirits.
Therefore, it is a matter of dedication. I become determined and dedicated to the unity of the Body. I refuse to be divided from my brother. Anything else I refuse in the name of the Lord. I refuse to react to it. My dedication has been wrought in my spirit by the Holy Spirit, and I dwell together with the Body in the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. I preserve it. I do this with all humility and gentleness and patience, showing forbearance in love.
That perfect unity could start right in every church. It can start because of our determination to enter into a dedication to it as we allow the Holy Spirit to work it within us. Let the Holy Spirit help us to stand on this word, because as we believe it, the Holy Spirit works the miracle of it. Declare it in the name of the Lord. It’s within your heart; it’s not far off. It’s in your heart and in your mouth and if you confess and believe it, you receive it in the name of the Lord. Speak it forth in your own words. There will be the diversity of expression as each man speaks it out of his own heart before the face of the Lord.
I curse the prejudices, the responses that come because of things planted in my mind and in my spirit long ago, perhaps even when I was a child. I curse them in the name of the Lord. My mind is not going to be that important to the governing of my life. My spirit before God is going to predominate. I bring the carnal mind to the work of the cross, absolutely. My mind shall be renewed, in the name of the Lord. I shall be without any prejudices from the human level. I shall be without any responses from the old nature. I shall be without any reactions from emotions that are not wholly sanctified before God. I determine that I am going to walk in the gentleness of Jesus Christ. I’m going to walk in absolute, total obedience before Him in the name of the Lord. I open my heart to my brother, I open my heart to my sister, and it becomes a dedication that I will walk with them with all of my heart.
For there the Lord commanded His blessing, even life evermore. Psalm 133:3b. It is in the state of unity that this blessing of life rests. When we come into this dedication of unity, we will enter the first phase of the greater works and exploits. Don’t ever doubt this in your mind. It is there that the Lord commands His blessing. It is good and it is pleasant to dwell in unity but the Psalm ends, “There the Lord commands His blessing.” It is found in that unity.
There may be things within your spirit that grieve you, but when you have problems, do not allow the burden of your own problem and the grievous dealings of the Lord to isolate you from the Body. Still maintain the flow as much as you can. It is a deception of Satan that comes against someone who is being tested, causing him to say, “Well, I’m not going to services now because I’m going through something. The Lord’s dealings are upon me.” Foolishness! Don’t cease the assembling of yourselves together, but do so all the more as you see the day approaching (Hebrews 10:25). All the more should you grant to the Body its capacity to make increase of itself in love, to bring the healing to each member in anything they are going through. See that you maintain that unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Do not withdraw. Do not reject. Keep your hearts open to each other. You cover your brother’s sin, not with the hypocrisy or deception of old order, but because of a great love.
When we come to this transparency which brings a deep perception of each other in the spirit, we look at our brother and we are able to see his need. We may look at a brother and say, “My, I didn’t know that mess was in him.” But when he looks at you, he sees the same thing. You still do not judge the brother because of it. You realize that love must always overwhelm the judgment, the revelation, and the perception we have of each other. If it does not, we become bitter, we judge and withdraw. Without the love, there is something self-righteous about us and a critical spirit enters in. Whatever you see, you must see it with enough love to begin to reach out and cover it and redeem and bless the brother (I Peter 4:8).
How can I cover my brother’s sin? By knowing that God has made you one. You are identified with all of the victories of Christ for His Body’s sake, and you are also identified with every victory your brother wins. If your brother rejoices, you rejoice with him. It is your victory too. If your brother is defeated, you are defeated too, and so you repent with him. You take upon yourself your brother’s sins and cry out to God for him.
Vicarious faith enters in until the lines of distinction between individuals come to an end. When you see something in your brother that must not be there, you become so identified with it that it becomes your need, your problem. You kneel before the Lord and repent with fasting and prayer, and encourage him to repent too. You entreat him as a brother. Of course, as the pattern is laid down, if he becomes rebellious, other dealings enter into the picture; but I don’t think that God intends for us to lose brethren. If we moved in these things in the right way, the discipline of putting people out of the church would be practically non-existent. Jesus said, “Of all those that You have given Me, Father, I have lost none, except the son of perdition, as was written (John 17:12).
Oh, how we want to have that love and unity, so that when we stand before the King in the glory of His Kingdom, when all the kingdoms of this world are dominated by one Kingdom and every crown is laid at His feet, then He will look upon us and say, “Well done, you lost none.”