The Living Word is meat in due season—just the Word that you need when you need it (Psalm 145:15). The principal thing this Word will do is show you where we are, and what we have to claim and walk in now. Regardless of our situation, the problems we face are not really our real problem.
When the old season ends a new level of the Kingdom begins, opens up to us. The dealings of God differed from what they had been before. Before that time, we often had to be patient and long-suffering with things that were really not what God wanted. We had to bear with certain situations and some people in their immaturity. Then God revealed, “Now, no more.” The burden that He had given me in Maui years ago ended. At that time He had said, “Have faith for every man.” Now He said, “They are in My hands; you leave them alone.” And I did.
The hardest thing that I have had to do—I can’t tell you how my heart has ached over it—has been to not interfere and let God work in people’s hearts. Maybe a mother knows what this is like. As she sees the father taking over the discipline of their child, she may wonder, “Is he being too harsh?” She feels such a sympathy for the little child, but that sympathy is not going to help that child. It is time for him to face some very harsh realities of discipline in becoming the person that he is to be. And that is what God is insisting for us. This move of God would have self-destructed in the immaturity of people, if it had continued on as it had been. The prophecies over them would never have been fulfilled. In this last year, more ministries have matured into the place that God wanted for them than in the many years before.
You say, “But we lost some of our leaders.” Did we really? Looking back at certain situations, I am aware of the undercurrent of criticism that was there, the lack of revelation, the lack of really giving the people the Living Word. The people are going through shakings, but they are coming along all right. Prophecies are being fulfilled. At the very beginning, during the time when the Lord first met me in the early fifties, He said, “I will take one of a thousand and bring them into what I have promised.” Since that time, we have experienced constant sifting. Sometimes He pruned us back so much that it seemed as if He were working against us.
The people in the pews have had a purer vision sometimes than those who were in the pulpit. This is mainly because Satan battles shepherds, and the whole issue in the last days is deception. God wants shepherds after His own heart. In the prophecies about the shepherds, I saw that God is going to give shepherds after His own heart.
“Return, O faithless sons,” declares the Lord; “for I am a master to you, and I will take you one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion. Then I will give you shepherds after My own heart, who will feed you on knowledge and understanding.”
“Then I Myself shall gather the remnant of My flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and shall bring them back to their pasture; and they will be fruitful and multiply. I shall also raise up shepherds over them and they will tend them; and they will not be afraid any longer, nor be terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the Lord. Jeremiah 3:14–15; 23:3–4.
But another prophecy says that where the sheep are scattered, the Lord Himself will become the shepherd, and He will go and bring them back.
For thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day.”
“I will feed My flock and I will lead them to rest,” declares the Lord God. “I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken, and strengthen the sick; but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment.” Ezekiel 34:11–12, 15–16.
I believe so strongly that we are ready for this now. Let us pray and believe the Lord, and give of ourselves all that we can, because He is going to bring those sheep in.
You may see one of us go through a very dry spell, but you can’t say, “That man is a desert.” Do you know that scientists have planted seeds which had lain dormant for hundreds of years, and those seeds have grown? The life was still in the seed. All that was needed was to give it a little water, a little attention, and it would grow. Likewise, all of the Word that has been spoken was never in vain.
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth, and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:10–11.
All that was done in the will of the Lord through these years is going to bear fruit. And that fruit is going to remain. God’s people will have the blessing of the Lord that they have desired.
“By this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.”
“You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to you.” John 15:8, 16.
When the people go through testings, I see where they are and what is happening to them. All of this has been difficult for me, but I know that God has restrained me. He has thrown me into personal circumstances and a physical battle which has restricted me. I am not apprehensive about my physical condition because I don’t think that it is the important issue. We have had years of believing for resurrection life, and I think that we should continue to exercise faith. That is our goal.
That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead. Philippians 3:10–13.
Remember that from the time Abraham received the promises, he continued to deteriorate physically until he considered his own body as good as dead and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; but in hope against hope, he still did not waver in unbelief. He believed that God was faithful and that what He had promised He was able to perform! (Romans 4:18–21.) How soon will we learn that we do not measure our faith by the appearance of circumstances, but by a Word that God has given; and then we press into it with all of our heart.
We realize what was said about delays shows that God’s strategy at the battle of Ai was to draw people out and find out where they were (Joshua 8:1–6). But it involved more than that. The delays have also been for a purpose where the attack of Satan has come against those who really are one in the Word. They have had to come to the place where that oneness is indeed accepted by faith—really accepted.
Those who hear the living word have had the same problem and the same battle that we go through. God is creating a oneness that is not on a human level—by personal affection, or by a sense of loyalty; it is in the Spirit.
God has been reducing things down to the basic foundation upon which this Kingdom Age will be built. When I see the faithful sheep in some of the local bodies, I realize that it is from that foundation that we begin to spread. You have to reach out, as sheep, and begin to bring other sheep back. Bring them back in and feed them; give them a message that is pertinent to what they are going through and help them a little bit. Do not look around to evaluate where people are or what they are going through in the dealings of the Lord. Look at this one thing: What has God said? And when you know what He has said, then you are filled with faith for it.
We saw churches that seemed to spring up almost miraculously. Then we watched God prune them right down to bare roots (John 15:1–2). But I am so aware of what God has done. Many of the people who were the “gung ho” prophets lacked something in their spirits (Romans 10:2–3). Some have tried to come into the walk with God feeling, “Oh, this is the greatest—this grace of God is so wonderful! It doesn’t make any difference if I am still on marijuana or some other drug.” But God did keep dealing and dealing with that thing. If a church is being built by people who have never experienced real deliverance, it is never going to be a strong church.
God has taken almost a whole generation of people who were blown out by drugs and many other things, and He has been working on them patiently. To tell you the truth, the addicts will get into the Kingdom of heaven ahead of the pharisees; they are going to make it first (Matthew 21:31).
But that does not mean that God will allow them to retain many of the things that are in their spirits. He will deal with them, and they will have to get rid of those things. I have watched how the little idiosyncrasies and things that would be definite weights in the race have to be put aside, one after another (Hebrews 12:1).
We know that we have looked to God for an impartation of righteousness (Philippians 3:9). How thoroughly God has gone through the churches! People who could be influenced or moved by something else besides the Word that has been spoken have been shaken (Hebrews 12:26–27). Does that mean that they are lost? No, it just means that God is going to see that they are restored to their faith on a right basis.
They are going to be righteous in their life—no matter how many times God has to put them through it. It is like the story of a young American singer who went to Europe to perform in a great opera. After she sang a certain aria, the audience applauded until she sang it again. Then they clapped some more and she had to sing it a third time. Again they kept clapping. This time she pleaded, “Please, I can’t sing it again.” Someone in the balcony jumped up and shouted, “You are going to sing it until you get it right!” God is doing that to us, too. He keeps giving us encouragement, but He is also telling us that we are going to keep moving in this until we are doing it exactly right, according to what He wants in the Kingdom.
We talk about the Kingdom, but we are coming into an era of troubled waters and of travail before this new level of the Kingdom has its visible expression to any degree.
“Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” Acts 14:22b.
We may go through many hard things. We are His people, a people of destiny, called by the Lord and raised up by Him (I Peter 2:9).
But consider this carefully: As you go through these difficult times, you must not only realize that God is working something in you; you must also be conscious of the fact that false Christs, and false prophets, and deception are the main characteristics of this hour on the negative side (Matthew 24:4–5, 11, 24; Mark 13:5–6, 22; Luke 21:8). At the same time, our revelation in the Word is the big thing on the positive side.
For this reason, I have tried to give you simple instructions. Stay in the tapes; stay in the Word. I spend more time now editing This Weeks than I ever have. There is diligence to see that the Word comes forth as pure as we can possibly give it to you. Why? It is that Word which will bring revelation to your heart. The Lord will be revealed to you; you will be revealed to yourself in the Word that you receive. You know that is true. But as the Word comes, know also that there will be a demonic warfare against it.
The battle is simply a war over the Word. There were those who were ready to receive it as a Living Word, and those who would not receive it as a Living Word (I Thessalonians 2:13). The result was that the division which was already there was manifested. This is not a new thing; it has been there for fifteen or twenty years. God is bringing this battle out in the open, because the people who continue to walk with God will be those who will “follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth” (Revelation 14:4). They are listening to what God is saying, and they are going to follow it (John 10:4). But in the meantime they are being tested very greatly by the deception that is coming.
The satanic deception is so great that people at the present time are in a warfare that I have never seen before. People have said to me, “You know, I went through a period recently in which I felt that I had lost out with God.”
What made you think that?
“Well, I don’t know what it was.”
Have you been doing what the Lord told you to do?
“Yes, I have been living in the Word; I have been working in the Word closer than ever before. What is this?”
At the present time, our people must come into greater discernment and revelation, because they do not realize that the thoughts they may be thinking are not their own. That one realization alone would do more than anything else to deliver people. When people start pouring out this kind of thinking, say, “Those thoughts are not yours.” Help them to realize it. That is not really what they think; that is not what they believe. It is not what God has revealed to them. It is not the Word of God over them. Where did it come from? There can be a satanic deception which imparts to people a thinking that is not right—it is not truly their thinking. It is thoroughly, completely deceptive; and they labor with it.
Do you realize that this is true? Have you experienced it yourself? You have to discern what is in your own spirit, what is really there. Then if it is wrong, and if you repent of it and get over it, it is taken care of. But if something keeps warring against your spirit, it may be coming from another spirit or person. It could be someone you are in tune with: someone whom you love, and who loves you; and there is a transference back and forth. Maybe it is something that is imposed on your thinking through a satanic attack. Get rid of that thing! That is where the war is, and that is where the war should end. God has not given us a spirit of fear (II Timothy 1:7). The intimidation, the drawing back, the acceptance of defeat, the feeling that we are neglected, that we are some outcast or pariah, that nobody loves us and that we have lost out with God—all that deception must go. You have been in too many things and received too much from the Lord for too many years to think that way. Have we come so far and heard so much of the Word only to listen to that lie?
Stop and think about it. People talk about reason. It is not reasonable to discard the revelation we have received for suspicions and feelings of false guilt. Many people have rejoiced that they have been living in that Word. It has been the greatest deliverance for them that they ever had. Forget the false guilt—there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). We are defeated if, after we have heard the Word and had all of these prophecies, we still listen to the deception of the enemy which comes to undermine all that God has done. The Word in your heart is still there. It is real; it is alive.
You may be thinking, “Yes, but some of us are gone.”
Don’t be discouraged. There are people who are on God’s operating table, and that is why they may not be in our services. There are people who are in His convalescent wards, and that is why they are not around. And there are people who have had a momentary battle or problem, and they are spiritually blinded. But that does not mean that they are lost. It just means that now it is time for the sheep to be brought together for a real time of feeding, a time of love, a time of blessing (Ezekiel 34:11–16; Jeremiah 23:3–4).
A few people have said, “But I don’t like the services anymore.” It is not whether we like the services or not. Do we see the direction they are going and what they are becoming? We are reaching for Kingdom-type services with dialogues and more people participating in true Body ministry. One of the finest tapes to be released recently is a dialogue on oneness. A few brothers and I were sitting down together around a table, and we just talked.
We will be having more Words like this. And we will be setting before the churches a course where people are going to receive impartation. You need that hands be laid upon you to get any confused thinking straightened out. You need to dump this garbage that you are wrestling with as though it were yours, and come back to the pure openness to the Word that is in your heart. Do you know in your heart that God has given you a Word? Do you believe that Word? Circumstances often seem to dilute the Word that you have received, or to eat away, like an acid, on the validity of that Word. But you cannot accept that. You must not accept it. Whenever I hear of some brother having a problem, the first thing I want to know is, “What was prophesied over that man?” When you know what the Word over someone is, and when that prophecy comes alive, you have a lot of authority to loose that person. You just say, “In the name of the Lord, I know what the will of God is for that person; and that is exactly what we are going to believe.”
It seems strange that a few have become apostate. We need a great deal of teaching yet, because we still have to become less religious. Read in the Scripture about religious people who practiced deception. The greatest deceptions of all time were perpetrated by people who got hit in a battle. Why did Peter swear that he never knew the Lord Jesus Christ? (Mark 14:67–71.) Was it fear, intimidation? What made Judas so vehement, so religious, that he wanted to take the precious ointment and sell it and give the money to the poor, when he couldn’t care less about the poor? (John 12:3–6.) What was it that motivated him? What was it that made Judas come up and kiss Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane? (Luke 22:47–48.) He was a man called to be a disciple; he had walked in an apostolic ministry of healing the sick and delivering people (Acts 1:17; Matthew 10:2–8).
I have often told you that many of the false prophets will come out of the walk. We must take heed because this thing is not over with yet—this battling against deception is going to continue (Matthew 24:4–5, KJV). It is not going to be less.
You may say, “I haven’t been so thoroughly shaken before; just settle me down.” I can’t do that. I would not do it if I could. If you are not going to put your faith in the Word, you are going to fail. You must believe the Word that has come. If you believe that Word, you are going to make it. An inventor could create an airplane, put it together part by part, and place it out on the runway. But the time finally comes when someone has to take that vehicle up and see if it will fly, if it will stand the stress. I can preach the Word to you, and I have done so as faithfully as I know how. I can give you my very heart, my life, beyond what a man has energy to do. I could give everything I have, and build the structure. Then I must call for the building inspector to come.
Paul tells us that every man’s work shall be tried to see what sort it is; it will be revealed with fire. He says, “Let every man take heed how he builds upon the foundation” (I Corinthians 3:9–15). When the building inspector, the Lord Jesus Christ, walks in, He gets a big box of matches and starts lighting them and throwing them. If your work burns up, He will say, “Sorry, your life’s work is lost but you yourself are saved, yet so as by fire.” But if He goes through and He finds out that it is gold, silver, and precious stones, then He will say, “Good, it stands.”
The time has come in which the bundling of the tares is taking place (Matthew 13:24–30). This still is a disturbing thing to every one of us, because they are people whom we love. Sometimes the people whom we have given the most attention to are the ones who do the worst in the battle. You love them the most, and they turn on you.
“And brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death.”
“For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” Matthew 10:21, 35–37.
“So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand to defend yourselves; for I will give you utterance and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute. But you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death.” Luke 21:14–16.
As I read Matthew 24, Luke 21, and Mark 13, I was so impressed that when it speaks about the end time and about the gospel of the Kingdom going into all the world, it is always speaking about a lot of deception, too. It speaks about false prophets and how if it were possible—that is found twice—the very elect would be deceived.
For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Matthew 24:24, KJV.
For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. Mark 13:22, KJV.
There is always something that comes which is so deceptive. It is so human. It is so believable. You could easily be so sympathetic to it. But it comes right down to the cold-blooded fact: “Hath God said?” is what Satan is saying to you (Genesis 3:1–5). He is saying, “Hath God said?” We must go back to whatever God has said to us and say, “I believe that Word. And I will stand because of that Word.” Some of our work may have been burned up, but much of it is still standing; it is good, solid growth that has come through the fire. It has come through shakings, it has come through deception, it has come through battles of rebellion, it has come through everything Satan could throw at it.
God did something for us all that I think is good: He never allowed there to be a closeness between me and the people, because I insisted on a oneness in spirit (John 17:11, 21–22). I didn’t even know to call it oneness back then, but I avoided the human bonds that are destructive. Consequently, those people whom I have reached out to, ministered to, and that I am one with are going to go on. Before God, they are going to go right on in the prophecies and the Word that has come to them. Those are the ones you can believe for, because you do not have to be apprehensive that, on a human level, you are disappointing or disillusioning them—you know that is not the important thing. It is not whether you fulfill what they demand you to be; it is whether you have fulfilled what God wants you to be to them.
Are you feeling, “Yes, we are going to move on in the Lord. We have not come thus far and lost all of these weights not to run a good race now” (Hebrews 12:1).
What do we look for in this day? What should we look for? What should we believe for? Believe two things: your prerogative to reject and your prerogative to receive. You can reject the lies of the enemy, the deception; you can reject all that is beamed at you (Ephesians 6:16). You can reject it totally, and you can receive impartation. Impartation can come and you can receive it. But if you turn that around the wrong way, and you reject what you should receive and receive what you should reject, you are in trouble.
Your problem is this: What are you going to reject and what are you going to receive? Most of you have already made your decision on that. You have determined what you are going to reject. We reject anything that is not the true apostolic Word, that is not the foundation of the Living Word that we have received.
We do not even have to evaluate that Word by the performance of some of the people in it, or by the illusion of how they are walking, or by the lies about them. That is not the issue. The only issue is: Was it a Word from the Lord?
After receiving an impartation for a certain ministry, you are thrown into the midst of a personal wilderness. I really went through testings, and our little church was going through them.
When we are rejected. Does that make null and void the prophecies that had come over me? I have to weigh that very carefully and say, “I am not going to judge this vessel. I do not know whether he is walking with God or not, but that is none of my business. I know that God spoke a Word through him which was greatly confirmed to me. It was a confirmed Word.”
Have you ever felt that same thing: “Well, some of the brothers, who had ministered a Word to me, have defected; and where are they now? Do I accept that Word or not?” Yes, if it was a Word from God. The issue is not human beings. The issue is God speaking a Word through imperfect channels (I Corinthians 1:26–29; II Corinthians 4:7).
God has brought one of the most perfect revelations in this generation through such imperfect channels. It still remains the mystery and the wonder and the miracle of God that such a wonderful thing, that is so right, has come in the teaching and in the revelation through all of these years.
That is why it is not important when various ones make accusations against us. I don’t think that is the important issue. I am not saying that we have done everything right, but we certainly have not done what their reports claim either. The persecutors will still go on accusing.
“Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me.” John 15:20–21.
But you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord delivered me! And indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them. II Timothy 3:10–14.
And if you need to have someone deny the accusations, then you are missing the mark, too. Do you not know the oracle and channel of the Word who has been speaking to you all these years? Simply accept me as an oracle of the Lord (I Peter 4:11; I Thessalonians 2:13).
If I have made mistakes, then I am in illustrious company. Consider Peter and all the mistakes he made (Matthew 16:21–23; 26:69–75). Paul made mistakes. Some could say that he was not consistent. He persecuted Christians one day and a few days later he was ministering to them (Acts 9:1–2, 19–22). Many men of God have fallen short of perfection.
How have you done? Have you made perfection? The whole idea is that God has given us a Word to bring us into that perfection, to really help us with it (Colossians 1:28; II Timothy 3:16–17).
Most of the criticism which has come against the apostolic company or against other brothers and sisters in the churches is not true. The justifiable criticism would be difficult to determine.
Where is the focus now? It is upon the brothers whom God sets before you, saying, “Here, let them minister to you.” As they do that, these brothers go through a death (II Corinthians 4:7–12). In the first place, the enemy is convincing them that they are unworthy to start with. They should not argue that point with the devil; they should agree that they are unworthy. We all have one thing in common: we are unworthy. And if the devil says that you are inadequate, just answer, “Yes, we are inadequate.”
Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God. II Corinthians 3:5.
But in the Scripture, you see that the Lord takes the foolish things, the base things, and the weak things to confound the wise (I Corinthians 1:25–29). Then go ahead and move in God, because we have to get off the level of human worthiness or human competence. We have to get into the place where it is by divine enablement (Philippians 4:13).
This is why impartation to you is so important. Come to the shepherds and say, “I need to have an impartation. God called me to do something that I cannot do.” Let them lay hands on you. Then you can do it. That is the way it is to be—it is that simple.
What would you think if someone pranced into your service clothed in camel’s hair or girded with leather, his mane flowing, desert pods in one hand and a honeycomb dripping from the other; and he yelled, “I have a Word from the Lord for you!” (Matthew 3:1–4.)
We always tend to go by the appearance and the illusion that is created on a human level instead of ferreting down to find God. The three wise men came to Herod saying, “We have come to find the King. Where is the King?” When they found Him, He was lying in a manger. Who is going to believe that He is a King? They took a look at Him, gave Him their gifts, and departed (Matthew 2:1–12). Apparently they may not have been too impressed, because they did not do much about their revelation of Christ after that. The only one who really believed was the devil; and he inspired Herod to kill all the children, two years old and younger, in order to destroy Jesus (Matthew 2:13–18). God does not seem to make a marketable revelation—you can’t hire an advertising agent to promote it.
“Well, don’t you think Jesus was beautiful? I have seen beautiful pictures that artists have drawn of Him.”
Yes, they paint beautiful pictures of Him, but remember that the prophet Isaiah said, “He hath no form or comeliness that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of men” (Isaiah 53:2–3). The biggest shock you could have would be if Jesus Christ walked into your church in the flesh. What if you saw Him exactly as He was when He walked the shores of Galilee? How would He appear?
“Oh, He must have been beautiful. He was the Son of God.”
I am a son of God too, but I don’t look very beautiful. God is bringing forth sonship in my life. Paul tells us that Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:10–11).
“Well, this walk is becoming a real reproach.”
Yes, I know. I received a letter recently from someone who had read a couple of books on cults. She included quotations from the books where they had quoted me on certain things and presented it as false. She wrote, “But what you said is the truth; it is a real revelation. The writers of those books have no revelation at all.” They take the Word out of context and try to present it as false.
The truth of the matter is this: We are partakers of the divine nature (II Peter 1:4). That is the big issue. We are partakers of the divine nature, but it doth not yet appear what we shall be (I John 3:1–2). We do not see what we are going to be yet. Are you what you are going to be? Or would you say, as Paul did, “I am not yet what I am going to be” (Philippians 3:12). Then give me the same privilege of not yet being what I am going to be. Give all the brothers in the apostolic company the same privilege of not yet being what they are going to be. But don’t despise what God has called them to be. He is saying, “Hail, mighty man of valour,” to many of these Gideons. But they still are intimidated (Judges 6:11–15). They are going to get rid of that because God did not give them that spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind (II Timothy 1:6–7).
God give us this right concept of ourselves, where we are not going to despise the work of God that is coming forth in us. We will not evaluate it by the human viewpoint of it, but we will go by what God has said. We are moving on into that, in the name of the Lord. Some things have not been fulfilled yet, but there have been so many things that God has wrought in us and fulfilled in us already.
Are you declaring, “I am going to reject everything that the enemy has thrown at me. This Word is opening my heart up to faith to believe that I can throw it off. I can reject anything that the enemy brings, and I can receive the impartation of this Word. God is going to bring forth to the fullest the faith that I have, the Word that He has planted in my heart (I Peter 1:23). The thing that He has done within me is going to abound in the name of the Lord. I am going to increase in love (I Thessalonians 3:12). I am going to increase in faith. I am going to move in the thing that God has for me, and I am going to reject the deception. I will reject the thing that wars against me, in the name of the Lord.” Do this with all of your heart.
It is very important that you read these Scriptures about the deception of the end time: Matthew 24:4–14, 23–25; Mark 13:5–13, 20–23; Luke 21:28–36. We are in a very fruitful period now, a time when ministries are going to break forth. The whole apostolic company is moving into mobile units, in preparation for moving through the nations.
But you should not be encouraged only because of a good report; you believe because of the Word. We don’t need to try to counteract bad reports with good reports. What we need to do is give the Word and the vision and move ahead. The quickest way to leave this area of battle is to move on to the next level.
Keep away from the feeling, “I can never make it. I don’t have the dedication. I don’t have the consecration.” If you must say that, say it with faith. Say, “I don’t have the dedication. Lay hands on me! I don’t have the faith. Impart it to me! Impartation will give me a gift of faith!” (I Timothy 4:14; II Timothy 1:6.) I think I have tried to teach you this for years; but you may still blame yourself because, humanly speaking, you can’t pump up enough faith. You never will be able to. It is a gift of faith that is going to matter (I Corinthians 12:9). One of the first things that moved me toward this walk with God came over thirty years ago when I read a book by Charles Price, The Real Faith. He said that it is not what our faith is, but it is His faith imparted to us.
And answering, Jesus is saying to them, “If you have faith of God, verily, I am saying to you that whosoever may be saying to this mountain, ‘Be picked up and cast into the sea,’ and may not be doubting in his heart, but should be believing that what he is speaking is occurring, it shall be his, whatsoever he may be saying.” Mark 11:22–23, Concordant Literal New Testament.
That gift of faith is ours. Two years ago, the Lord said, “It will no longer be by the word of wisdom only; it will be by a gift of faith” (I Corinthians 12:7–9). From that time on, every circumstance has demanded more than wisdom for a solution. It has demanded that we look to God and that there be a faith from God, a faith beyond what we have ever had. It is an impartation of faith. We believe for the Lord to impart that faith through this Word. It is ours to receive. We can receive that faith and walk in it, in the name of the Lord.
Where the Living Word seed has been sown, the land may be a desert; but there is still life in the dormant seed. Lord, rain upon it.
The negative: All deception is satanic and destructive. The positive: The Word is faithful and true.
Revelation in the Word is life. Deception is death.
Revelation-faith or satanic deception determines the true prophet from the false.
It is your prerogative to accept the truth and reject the lie. Deception comes when we reject the Word that was revealed and confirmed to us.
The confirmed Word to your heart should not be rejected, even if the lips that spoke it falter or fail.
The Word of God is established by confirmation, not by the faithfulness of the vessel that spoke it.
Revelation and faith are gifts of the Spirit. Deception and unbelief are the perversions of the Angel of Light, Satan.