We are in a time of great spiritual conflict, but we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). That places us in a unique position, assuring us that anything which is plotted against us will be thwarted in the overall blessing of the Lord. We are looking forward to the one great push of the centuries: to see the Kingdom evangelism reach the whole world. God has been preparing us for this for many years. “For this gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world…” (Matthew 24:14).
The violence of persistent faith, into which the Holy Spirit has directed us for several years, is not a physical violence. Our violence is that which Christ spoke of in Matthew 11:12: … the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. I trust before God that not one of us would be guilty of resorting to physical violence. We do not go out with sword and spear, but we do come in the name of the Lord, believing that the kingdoms of this world, in their arrogance and rejection of Christ, will be brought to bow before the Lord (Philippians 2:10). Our weapons are not carnal (this has been stressed repeatedly), but they are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, able even to make the thoughts and imaginations of men’s hearts subject to Christ (II Corinthians 10:4–5). This is our calling in God. It is very important that this violence not be misinterpreted as being physical. Even if violence comes against us physically, we are not to retaliate on that level. This is the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Why is this walk with God being persecuted by other Christians? Because Christianity as a whole has so many Babylonian corruptions in it that it fights the way of righteousness. Babylon, the great mother of harlots, holds in her hand a cup. She is drunk on the blood of the martyrs, the saints of God (Revelation 17:4–6). We have been praying that no longer shall a lifeless Christianity suck the life of God’s end-time remnant—“drinking their blood,” so to speak. We must be free from that, in order that Christ may prevail and the true Church, the true Bride, may come forth. This is scriptural, but it is not the traditional interpretation. Consequently, there will be a great deal of reaction against it.
When you are disturbed and confused by a difficult situation that is taking place around you, and you do not know how to react to it, then you must pray with wisdom. As much as possible, avoid praying concerning individuals and personalities. If you are to pray in specific terms, go into your closet in secret, and your Heavenly Father will answer you openly (Matthew 6:6).
Because there is so much agitation against cults at this time, you must be especially careful about what you say and do. It does not matter how right you are in a given situation; you will receive a backlash from it. We are not opposed to receiving persecution because of the Living Word that we speak, but let us not do anything stupid that would provoke it. Reproach and persecution will come to us, and we must be prepared to walk through it, doing the best we can to see the Lord bring deliverance.
It is imperative that you see the necessity of dedication-revelation. In a time of testing, those who have just been going along without any depth of dedication or revelation themselves will not be able to stand. If this move of God in the earth is not real to you, you will not be able to endure the persecutions against it. In fact, you will see no reason why you should. If there is any question in your mind concerning your revelation of this end-time move of God’s Spirit, the one thing you should do is earnestly ask the Lord to show you whether or not it is real. If it is real to you, then stand up and be counted. Stand firm with all of your heart. But if it is not real to you, then you had better adjust yourself to a spiritual level which is compatible with the measure of revelation which the Lord has given you. Do not push yourself beyond this point.
All of us have received a Living Word to become something under God. It is what you have become that is truly important. In the hour of testing it is not your opinions or reactions at that moment, but what the Word has really become in your life, that will make the difference between your pressing in or not pressing in to do what God has called you to do.
You may not agree with everything you see, because there are always problems of growth and change among us. However, you must admit that as we look to God, He works out the problems in amazing ways. We are receiving now the blueprints for what is presently set before us. We have not “passed this way heretofore” (Joshua 3:4), so we have not been able to predict exactly how we shall do the will of God in such areas as music or the Kingdom schools. But we do know that we are moving forward effectively, step by step. We ought not to retreat just because we are going through a few difficult problems. In fact, when we have a choice, whether to be on the defensive or to advance, let us determine to go ahead and see what we can appropriate next in the will of God.
Searching out elemental spirits by revelation and voicing judgment upon them has opened up many fields of blessing and ministry. Through revelation, we have begun to bind principalities and powers. If we are to see this nation turn to God, it will be on a spiritual basis. Again, remember our stand: Violent will be our prayers and our cry to God for this nation to be preserved in God, for the Stars and Stripes to fly in the Kingdom. We will pray and believe for that.
Few Christians have enough faith to believe that God can preserve this country. There is a cloud of despair and unbelief upon people everywhere, as they look for disaster or the judgment of God to fall. We are looking for God to bring a deliverance. We believe this with all of our hearts, and this is what we mean by violence. It is expressed also in the first commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5). Everything within us is involved in loving God and serving Him. Our approach to God is very intense. We have used the word “violence” to describe it, but perhaps the terms “intensity” and “wholeheartedness” would express it more accurately.
We need to be made aware of the relationship between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world, because as the people of God we are caught between the two. What should be our attitude toward national and local government agencies and the Kingdom of God? Will being an American citizen conflict with being a citizen of the Kingdom of God? If we read the Scriptures carefully, we shall find that there is a difference, because the kingdoms of this world must become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ (Revelation 11:15). In every earthly kingdom there is an arrogance that possesses the people’s minds. As citizens of the Kingdom of God, we shall continue to be submissive to government authorities, to pay our taxes, and to abide by the laws of the land, for we are not revolutionaries in the sense of being physically violent. But while we do all of that, we remember also that we are seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). We know where our loyalties lie.
In his first Epistle, Peter wrote concerning the Kingdom: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. I Peter 2:9–10.
We are brought into God’s Kingdom. We were nowhere; we were nobodies. But now we are the Kingdom of Christ, a holy priesthood. God has made us to be a nation, a people for His own possession. How then are we to live? Do we exist here on earth as some foreign element? Naturally, the world has difficulty accepting us, just as a transplanted organ is often not accepted by the human body. Philippians 3:20 proclaims that our citizenship is in heaven. The Moffatt translation of that verse says that we are “heaven’s colony.” We are not an indigenous growth here. We are a foreign object in the midst of this world. Therefore it is difficult for the world system to accept us. Christ instructed us to be in the world, but not of it (John 15:19). Because we are a creation of God, we do not fit into the fallen race anymore. God is lifting us out of it by the creative work that He is bringing.
This does not mean that we should disregard what is going on around us. I Peter 2:11–25 gives sound instructions for our behavior in this world. Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul. Because we are a part of God’s Kingdom in the earth, we are called aliens and strangers. Does that mean we are to renounce our American citizenship? Absolutely not!
Peter continues, Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.
Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. Honor all men; love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king. Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable. (I wonder how many employees would like to have that verse deleted from the Bible!) For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a man bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly. For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.
For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.
Peter made it very plain that while we are citizens of the Kingdom of God, we are also coexisting with this present world. Until all of the kingdoms of this world are totally submissive to Christ, we must cope with them. This means that even when we think that something is unjust or even unreasonable, we fulfill what is set before us because that is the requirement according to the Scriptures. However, if we can change that which is wrong, we set about to change it.
I Peter 2:18 presents a line of teaching which we must carefully observe. Slaves and servants are commanded to be submissive to their masters with all respect, even to those who are unreasonable. One form of slavery was abolished with the Civil War. Blacks are no longer yanked out of the jungle, brought to America, and sold as slaves. Today men find other ways of enslaving one another—through the present economic system, for example. Realizing that, are we to rebel against the system, in the hope of making everybody free? It is true that Christ does want everyone free, but He does not institute reform by war.
The Civil War in the United States was unscriptural, and probably one of the greatest disasters that ever happened in America’s history. The evil of slavery should not have been overcome by bloodshed. It should have been abolished by spiritual means—and it could have been. It could have been! It was greed that made men fight one another over issues that were falsely projected as great and mighty, worthy of almost causing a nation to be broken to pieces. That was not what God wanted. What is the scriptural admonition to a slave? “Strive to be free, and if you can obtain your freedom, then use it. If you cannot, then serve God under your present status” (I Corinthians 7:20–22). Christ did not try to bring social reform by physical violence. This is difficult for people to understand.
Consider the position of women today. In every Christian country, women have far more liberation than in other countries, and they are trying to attain still more. Many women want to move in domination, not liberation; they want to take over. Women already own more real property in the United States than men do. In no other place of the world does the woman have the rights that she enjoys in a nation with a Christian heritage. In some parts of the world a woman is bought and sold like a cow, harassed and esteemed as very unworthy; while the man continues in his dominant arrogance.
Where Christ has ruled, or where the Christian Church has had influence, it has been the salt of the earth and an instrument of change. No big revolution was needed to start those changes working. The Kingdom of heaven comes like leaven hidden in three measures of flour, and soon the whole is leavened (Matthew 13:33). All we have to do as citizens of the Kingdom is to worship and to prophesy, to move in what God has for us, speaking the Living Word and seeing it sent forth, because that is the factor which will change the structures of society. We do not have to use physical violence to change society; we will do it by a Word.
Even if all devil-possessed people were lined up and executed, Satan would not be defeated thereby. The demons would immediately go into a herd of pigs or some other form of life, and the problem would still exist (Luke 8:26–33). We do not overcome evil by combatting it in the same way it comes against us. Because we earnestly desire to see God move in the earth, we submit totally to Him. We must reach the place where we can love even our enemies. Others may come against us, but God has given us a promise that in the end time no weapon formed against us will prosper (Isaiah 54:17). God will break the blades off our accusers’ swords, and bring us into a level that we have not walked in heretofore.
It is very difficult for the human nature not to react vindictively to persecution. When the human nature enters into a situation, then nothing is accomplished spiritually. God cannot bring the victory as long as the one involved is not yielded to Him in the realm of his spirit so that He can make him an instrument. None of the ancient armies could cope with Elijah or Elisha. On one occasion, when fifty men came to take the prophet of God, he said, “If I am a man of God, let fire consume them” (II Kings 1:10, 12). In other words, “God, You defend me. You take on these enemies Yourself.” Elijah was wholly dependent on God to defend him, and He did.
There may be times when God does not defend certain of His servants. If we are chosen to be martyrs for Him, we will rejoice in the privilege. But if it is God’s will for us to prevail by the Spirit, we believe for that. And this is exactly what He has been speaking to us, that we will prevail in the Spirit. We submit to the institutions that God has raised up, because we know that this is God’s way of working, and it is what He says to us in His Word.
I Timothy 2:1–8 expresses this same thought. First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony borne at the proper time. And for this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying) as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension.
We have learned how to relate to one another, and we have learned how to relate to the Lord. How do we relate to the world? With hostility in our spirits? or with an uncompromising dedication to see the Kingdom of God come forth by the means and channels that God wants it to come forth? That should be easy for us to understand. We pray for the Lord to give us the beautiful life that is described in I Timothy 2:2.
At the time when the Epistle to the Romans was written, there was no greater hostility against the Christian Church than that which was coming from the Roman government. Great persecutions came from the emperors, sometimes very unjustly. When Nero had Rome burned as the preliminary step to his reconstruction project, he blamed the Christians for setting the city on fire. Thousands of Christians were killed to cover up the evil that Nero himself had done. (It has been said that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. This is not true, because the violin was not invented until more than a thousand years later.)
Many unjust things will be said about anyone who chooses to walk in the way that God is leading us. What are you to do as a result of this persecution? Keep your heart open to God, and obey Him just the way He says. What about refusing to pay income tax, or going on a strike? Forget that kind of thinking! Continue to pay your income tax, rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s (Matthew 22:21). The trouble is that today “Caesar” is taking much more than he is supposed to take. Nevertheless, it is your privilege to vote for legal propositions designed to curtail those over you who make unjust demands and do not produce the services for which you are being taxed. This is a good form of protest against the inefficient way that taxes have been spent.
If you want to make an honest application of your rights, you will consider not only those who are over you in government, but also yourself, as part of our democracy (whether it seems to work out that way or not). The people are part of the governing force, too, and there should be as much dignity and respect for their vote as there is for the decisions of the government officials. We all want to see things come to pass in the way that we know is righteous before God.
Does this mean that we are getting into politics? Any citizen of the United States gets into a certain amount of politics because of his responsibility as a citizen to stand for what is right, for there must be law and order. There may be much corruption and crime, but keep reaching for that which is righteous.
Notice what Paul tells us in Romans 13:1–10 concerning obeying the government: Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil. Wherefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.
Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.
Open your heart to this passage, for it describes how we shall be a part of two governments: the Kingdom of God and a kingdom of this world. At the present time the rock cut out of the mountain without hands is striking at the feet of world governments, and eventually it will grind them to powder (Daniel 2:45). Do not believe that the world will continue very long as it is now. Changes will come to pass, but let those changes come by faith, not because there is deterioration, disintegration, and degradation in the world system that Satan takes over. Let the changes come because the people who love God and love His Kingdom are constantly exercising the force of their faith to bring about the will of God in the earth.
In taking over everything, God will use you as a human instrument in His hand to bring about His will in the earth. You cannot live for God and not be involved. You cannot go off into a corner to wait until God gets it done. When you stand and pray, “Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,” you are praying the prayer Jesus taught you to pray (Matthew 6:9–13). You are believing that every knee will bow to Him, that every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord for the glory of God (Philippians 2:10–11).
If you feel a little fearful or apprehensive about what is going to happen in the days ahead, commit it to God and pray, “Lord, just teach me how to walk with You day by day with all my heart, and not to fret myself because of those who do evil.”
Lord, we look to You. We do not want to be a fearful people, nor do we want to be a compromising people. After receiving so much from You, we do not want to back away from it. But we do want to apply the Word that You have given us in the way that You say we are to apply it. We know that we cannot use carnal means to bring about a spiritual end, for our weapons are not carnal; they are mighty through God (II Corinthians 10:4). We reach to You, Lord, believing that You will bring down every lofty thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of Yourself (II Corinthians 10:5). We believe in the ultimate glory of God in the whole earth. We believe that the Kingdom of God will come forth in the earth. We believe in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 17:14). We believe that He shall rule and reign, for this is His right.
We believe that the simple voicing of our prayers and our faith will bring Thy divine power into action and bring about Thy will in the whole earth. We commit ourselves to Thee, Lord. We refuse to walk by any other word than Thy Word. We submit ourselves wholly unto You. So completely do we yield that whatever You tell us to do, we shall do, in Your name.
We take upon ourselves the armor of God, that we may resist all the powers of darkness, and “having done all, to stand” (Ephesians 6:13). We do not fear, for we know that Christ is coming to rule, “to be glorified in His saints” (II Thessalonians 1:10).