How foolish and how evil has been the bitterness and rebellion of some hearts, and how wonderful has been the oneness and unity that has come forth in others.
I was not able to tell you these things before, but I’m going to tell you some things now that started a number of days ago. Two or three months ago God began to reveal the strategy by which we were to enter into these wonderful days.
To begin with, the reports are so wonderful. From places where they have seemed to go through a great crisis, we are receiving letters that they have had the most astounding breakthroughs they have ever had. Of course, this just adds to my joy and my blessing.
There is a joy coursing through our spirits which is saying, “The day of victory has really come.” God’s strategy has really worked. I have never known anything in my life as wonderful as the wisdom of God that has so ordered these days. This has been the strategy of Ai. If you are wondering why nothing has been said about this before, frankly, the Lord had sealed my lips and the lips of many who were praying and seeking God with me. They knew what the situations were, and they had faith to see the outcome in the will of God; but they have kept their mouths shut until the strategy of Ai has fully worked.
You say, “What is the strategy of Ai?” If you remember, the second city in the conquest of Canaan was Ai. The children of Israel went against Ai; but because of Achan’s sin at Jericho, they suffered a defeat. After they had repented and taken care of the problem, they knew they had to go back and take Ai (Joshua 7:2–8:1). If you read the eighth chapter of Joshua carefully, you will see that Joshua had a strategy. That strategy was to draw out and destroy those who wanted to murder the people of God, to see that this city in the land where the temple was to be built and where the prophets were to come forth would be utterly destroyed. The possession of the land by the Israelites was an intense and total war at Ai, as you will see.
And it came about when the king of Ai saw it, that the men of the city hurried and rose up early and went out to meet Israel in battle, he and all his people at the appointed place before the desert plain. But he did not know that there was an ambush against him behind the city. And Joshua and all Israel pretended to be beaten before them, and fled by the way of the wilderness. And all the people who were in the city were called together to pursue them, and they pursued Joshua, and were drawn away from the city. So not a man was left in Ai or Bethel who had not gone out after Israel, and they left the city unguarded and pursued Israel.
Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it into your hand.” So Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand toward the city. And the men in ambush rose quickly from their place, and when he had stretched out his hand, they ran and entered the city and captured it; and they quickly set the city on fire. When the men of Ai turned back and looked, behold, the smoke of the city ascended to the sky, and they had no place to flee this way or that, for the people who had been fleeing to the wilderness turned against the pursuers. When Joshua and all Israel saw that the men in ambush had captured the city and that the smoke of the city ascended, they turned back and slew the men of Ai. Joshua 8:14–21.
The few Korahs and rebellious ones who have been gloating and saying, “My, we are winning this battle; it won’t be long until our brother is dead, and we will have won our victory,” are being smoked out. In their hearts, they have rejected the Living Word for some time, and have kept the Word from their people for some time. And it was very necessary for God to smoke them out. There is a nursery rhyme which reads something like this: “Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire, and your children are alone.” Isn’t that the strategy of Ai?
This strategy that God has set before us is one of the clearest indications of the Joshua ministry the Lord has given me. During the Feast of Tabernacles, the Lord began to speak, and prophecies continued to come on into the next year: “I have removed from you the ministry of Moses, in which you have laid down the principles of the Kingdom all of these years. Now comes the day in which you will lead the people like Joshua into battle.” The only thing we have had to learn is how to follow the captain of the host of the Lord.
You see, there are just too many things that God is doing. But there is always a group of Pharisees standing around, and it is interesting to see their viewpoint. The Pharisees looked at the Lord and said, “Glutton and winebibber” (Luke 7:34). God is really drawing them out at Ai. Many things are beginning to happen.
I have many things to tell you here, and I hope you will take the time to read and listen carefully. This war is over the Word. How many hundreds of times have you heard me quote Joshua 1:8–9: “Meditate on the Word day and night.” And I have done this. The war is over the Word. Joshua did not have to be a military strategist. He had only to listen to what God wanted him to do, and to listen to the Word. That is what I have been trying to do—listen to that Word and follow it. Of course, the opposition comes—even litigation in court to sue for the copyrights and to stop the Living Word. That thing will not succeed! Then they say, “If we can’t do that, let’s kill the channel who has been speaking the Living Word.” They cannot do that either, because this war over the Word is going to be won. This Living Word is the greatest thing that has come in hundreds of years. Century after century, nothing has come that more clearly opens up the heart of the Scriptures and the heart of God than this Living Word.
Let me tell you what is going to happen. What happened to Absalom? His body was pierced by many darts (II Samuel 18:14–15). What happened to Korah? He dropped down to examine the subterranean levels (Numbers 16:31–33). What is going to happen to these Korahs today? They are going to be swallowed up. By the time that you read from the thirtieth to the fiftieth verse in Numbers 16, you are aware of something: The big tragedy was not Korah and the few he had around him; it was that damnable sympathetic spirit of rebellion and resistance to the Word of God that was in the hearts of many of the people. The next day, fourteen thousand seven hundred people perished in the gainsaying of Korah (Numbers 16:49). God pushed down that big first domino of Korah’s rebellion, and it was surprising how many had that same spirit and went down with it.
That is what God has been doing. He has been drawing out the people who were rebelling against the Word and who did not want to submit to the authority that God was bringing forth in the divine order of the Kingdom. They rebelled. Churches have been writing and saying, “We have never had it so good. It is wonderful; the ministries are coming forth.” Other men are going out—vicious wooden robot messiahs trying to “save the world.” They exaggerate their sense of importance, saying, “We have to stop that Stevens.” No, they are just trying to stop the Word. They will find that the Word is bigger than Stevens and it is bigger than them. And they are not going to stop it. None of them are going to stop it.
I have understood what God wanted. The walk had been built up and it had grown like a big beautiful field—a harvest field. There was a lot of wheat and there were tares. You have heard me speak many times that this is the time of the bundling of the tares and the wheat (Matthew 13:24–30, 36–42). Can we help it if God is a consuming fire? He has thrown a few matches. Ai has to burn. The tares have to burn. God has looked at all the things that we have planted and said, “Who put these tares here?” Sometimes you could not distinguish where they were or who they were, but the time has come that They went out from us, but they were not of us: for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. I John 2:19, KJV.
The tares are facing a kind of problem. They are discovering that, unwittingly, they have been bundled. This handful of men find themselves gravitating to one another—vicious little demagogues who never would have had anything to do with each other in the past. Now it seems to their mutual self-interests to stand together against the Word. Well, they have been standing against the Word for a long time, but they thought that they finally had their opportunity. The strategy of Ai pulled them out to say, “Now we can stop it.” It has been a murderous thing that I have faced in the hearts of men whom I have loved very deeply and given my life to; and it may be that this includes those of my own family. But the time had to come that the line be drawn; and it is being drawn.
Has this been a deception? Well, Ai was a deception. But it was God’s unique way of revealing the truth. It was a strategy that brings out the real deception: the people who are in deception because of their rebellion. That is what it uncovered. God is using the strategy of Ai because He intends to reveal just where we all stand.
Let me illustrate how this works from the Scriptures. Everything that is happening to us is all written out there in advance. If we just listen to it and listen to the Living Word that is highlighting its fulfillment in this generation, we will be wise to follow the Lord.
I Corinthians 3:12–15: Now if any man builds upon the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it, because it is to be revealed with fire; and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built upon it remains, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire.
I have worked all my life to help lead people into the ways of God. A few have taken the Word and tried to use it to build their own kingdoms or to do something else besides bring people into the maturity of sonship. Now God has brought forth this day in which, by the strategy of Ai, the unseen presence of Christ has been throwing matches on everything that I have labored to bring forth in God.
A lot of wood, hay, and stubble is going to be burned up; but what I rejoice in is the great quality and quantity of the gold, the silver, and the precious stones that are standing and enduring as the true Kingdom of God. Month after month we see such a maturing in God’s people.
There are always people out there who say, “We are critical of this!”
What are you critical of?
“Intercession.”
Why?
“Because in the intercession you are praying for judgment on people!”
I admit very freely that there have been times when people have prayed that very thing. But you must also face the fact that the true apostolic Word has been, “We are not fighting against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers, against all of the hosts of darkness, the nephilim spirits” (Ephesians 6:12). Consistently I have said that.*
We were not actually into personalities during these years so much as we were identifying the spiritual battle and ourselves as the army of the Lord. I cannot ever accept responsibility for casualties in a war that the Lord has commanded any more than Joshua could expect to take personal responsibility for every man that died in Ai. Someone could have said to him, “You’re a murderer!” He was not a murderer; he was Joshua who was leading the people of God to do what God said, and he killed twelve thousand people in one day at Ai (Joshua 8:25). When he finished, God hung medals on him. Because he was obedient to God, he was not a murderer.
That has to sink into our minds and hearts. We live because we are to do the will of God: If we have reached maturity, we are sons and we are led by the Spirit of God (Romans 8:14). And we have a Kingdom conscience about these things. Go up to every veteran who fought in World War II for the U.S.A., the Stars and Stripes, and say, “We are going to try you for every bullet that killed a Nazi, for every bullet that killed someone in the Pacific because you were out there defending liberty and democracy. You are responsible. “Those men will say, “I am only sorry I could not have killed more, because it was not a personal responsibility. I could not have a personal conscience about it. If I were to walk down the streets of my hometown and shoot people, that would be different. But if I reach in to do the will of God and of my country, that is not murder—it is patriotism.”
As we come to the days of the Kingdom, we begin to realize that the slain of the Lord will be multitudes.
For the Lord will execute judgment by fire and by His sword on all flesh, and those slain by the Lord will be many. Isaiah 66:16.
Horsemen charging, swords flashing, spears gleaming, many slain, a mass of corpses, and countless dead bodies—they stumble over the dead bodies! All because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the charming one, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations by her harlotries and families by her sorceries. Nahum 3:3–4.
But they will be the slain of the Lord, with no responsibility or jeopardy upon the individual who was the instrument of God to bring it to pass. You had better face it; that is exactly the way it is. So, Ai leaves us with a feast of rejoicing, and yet twelve thousand people were slain (Joshua 8:25–26). “Draw them out, Lord.”
It is surprising how people who would not listen to tapes before are listening critically to a few now. Well, this Word is their doom. You had better face it: If you followed the Lord, that will be your preservation. If you rebelled against His Word, you have been drawn out like the men of Ai to your destruction. Look behind you. Your city is on fire. The evil report and the unbelief that you rejoiced in and believed is a fantasy. It did not exist. You were drawn into God’s trap.
Do you say, “This can’t be right”?
Oh, it is right. It was right in the Church Age; it is right in the Kingdom Age. To tell you the truth, back in the days of Moses and Joshua it was right. What was right? It was right that God wanted to minister to His people that which would get them out of their immaturity and see them stand on their own feet and walk with God according to whatever revelation they had received; that they would abandon the immaturity and weakness whereby they were susceptible to the lies of the enemy.
It has always been true that deception would come, but God always says, “If you listen to My Word, listen to what My servant is going to say to you as an oracle of God, you will grow by it” (I Peter 2:2; 4:11). Someone can say, “I don’t want to hear that. I want to preach my own word. You will never catch me going to a This Week and preaching out of it.” Yes, and in your rebellion you are just liable to lead your own flock right over the precipice—blind leaders of the blind (Matthew 15:14). If you were not blind you would have seen the revelation and light that was coming forth. Blindness in the Kingdom of God is a deliberate, willful thing.
You cannot say that faith is a result of enlightenment, and rebellion is a result of no faith. That is not necessarily true, because rebellion is often a determined thing just as faith is. You determine what you will believe and what you will not believe. The rebellious had already made their decision: “We will not accept this.” In the case of Korah and his followers, they said, “We will not accept this man for what God says he is to be to us and what he is to say to us.” They came up with that grand religious thing: “All of God’s people can hear His voice and know His will” (Numbers 16:3). Indeed, they can.
But you know too that God has always had a door opener. And some of you are going to walk into a wall if you do not have the revelation to see the door that is open to you.
But all of this is the negative side of the picture. This message is to help you faithful brothers and sisters who have listened to what has been happening. You probably have noticed that while the Word has been against the rebellious, it has caused the rest of you to feel, “This is exactly what it is all about. This is what we have wanted and waited for; now we are moving into it.”
It is amazing the ministries that are maturing under the tapes that are coming now. The tapes are listened to over and over again by the people. They meet in services; they meet in homes and they listen to these tapes. What a fantastic thing it is. This one mark of rebellion can always be clearly seen. If you are rebelling against the Word you will minimize the Living Word that is coming, or you will reject it entirely. I cannot point to any one of these Korahs who had not already cancelled his tape orders and cancelled his shipment of This Weeks. In one church, we went through some old storage bins they had and found box after box of This Weeks which had never even been opened. The leader did not want the people to read them. Well, the time changed. When they opened up the boxes and put the This Weeks out for everyone to take, it was almost like that day at Samaria when the famine was broken. If someone had been in their way he would have been trampled (II Kings 7:17–20). The people were that hungry for the Word. That made me rejoice. You see, the hunger for the Word is in these little people. And God is going to give them shepherds after His own heart (Jeremiah 3:15).
Well, He is doing that. And don’t these shepherds who have fleeced the flock hate this—those who have exalted themselves to be important in their position. Really, I do not judge them for these negative things; I could forgive them a thousand times if it were not for the fact that they did not love the sheep. That is the one thing I have always required: “If you are going to be a shepherd, love the sheep” (John 21:15–17; I Peter 5:1–3). And they do not love them. You can always beware when a man is insisting on his authority, and for people to be submissive to him, and he is arbitrary in his judgments, and he runs people off if they do not agree with him. Where is that shepherd’s heart which he is supposed to have for the sheep?
We believe in an apostolic ministry in these days; we have believed in it for a long time. An apostolic ministry, however, is never spelled with a capital “A,” because an apostle is just one of the little people; and he is given as a gift to the people, a commission to bring them to the Living Word that God has for them to receive.
Probably the very heart of this message is found in Ephesians 4:11–14: And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers (why?), for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ. I don’t care who claims to be an apostle; the proof is in the eating of the pudding: … the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.
If the elders cannot function after all these years as New Testament elders, if the commissioned ministries are not functioning, I don’t care what they call themselves or what they were called to be; the evidence of their ministry is the fruit of it that exists.
Paul goes on to say, Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children … You see, if the people have not been matured in this true apostolic Word that has come, or they have not been exposed to it that they might have maturity, they are going to be children. How are the children described?… tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming.
A couple of pastors slipped approvals of meetings to me so that I would sign them. I found out months later that this was a trick to get me off of their church corporations, because they wanted to do their own thing. That trickery was there. These things are tricking people until they do not have a chance to receive the Word. These men see to it that the people do not get it. They lie to them, they connive, they keep two sets of books—one for the government, one for the way it really happened. They go around saying, “I’m consecrated; I’m dedicated,” while they are filling their pockets with loot. And the little people are the ones who suffer. They hang on to them as if they were chattel property. They stick their hot branding iron on their rumps and say, “This belongs to me. It’s mine.” They never acknowledge that the people were bought by Christ with the price of His own precious blood, and they belong to Him (Acts 20:28; I Peter 1:18–19). They suppress them as though they were children, and let them be tossed by the waves, carried about by the trickery of men in craftiness and deceitful scheming.
Has this really happened? Before God, it happened in two of our churches. You say, “I didn’t know that.” I have not disclosed it until now. The strategy of Ai had to pull them out and show what they had really done. People say, “Well, I hear So-and-So has left the walk.” Tell me, do you think they were ever in it? There is something that you have to see. The Kingdom is coming forth, and the tares and the wheat are being separated, and we have never had such blessing as we have now among the remnant that is coming forth. Churches all over the country are getting into the working in the Word, and the ministries are finally functioning.
The release of the letter that identified those who were bonding people to themselves wrongly was just a token; it was just a beginning. It was something that was necessary because it was like Korah; it smoked out another bunch of them. Remember that Korah’s judgment only triggered off the fact that the next day fourteen thousand seven hundred people with a sympathetic spirit to his rebellion were isolated as not having the real revelation and submission to the Word of God. That is exactly what this has done. It smoked them out. It brought them out, so that they would see where they really stand. And God has done this.
I believe that we have more real apostles and prophets functioning now, who are not even claiming any position at all, than we saw come up in the whole first thirty years of this walk. I believe that with all my heart. I watch them. I watch the way God puts them through testings; I watch the way they sacrifice and live. Someone sent out a letter saying, “Oh, the old father ministries are diminishing.” I have to tell you something: this father ministry is not diminishing. I am not going to fail to discipline my sons; and as a result, there is a great deal of maturity coming forth and a lot more good father ministries. These are the ones who are going to do the will of God, not moving by trickery or craftiness in deceitful scheming.
You say, “You can’t publish this message!”
You’re reading it, aren’t you?
I am rejoicing in one thing especially that is happening in this day. The revelation of the Word has been deeper than I have ever seen it in my life. If you have been listening to the Living Word tapes you know that. Let’s just listen to the Word. It has been alive. It is easy to condemn if you are not listening and say, “The life is not there.” What happened to all the people who said that in the North Chicago areas? They said that after a certain date the Word was not alive. When they brought in their stockpile, however, and they sold all of their tapes, it was clear that they did not want to hear any of them, even the ones they claimed were a Living Word. What they said was just an excuse. Where are they now?
You have to face it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John, and he spoke a Word to you (John 1:6). And that Word is a Living Word. (The churches in the Midwest have to hear this.)
You say, “You don’t have confirmation.”
I have much more confirmation than any have had in their rebellion. Confirmation has come through men and women who have stood, prayed, and believed God, and said, “God has spoken that to my heart; I just have been praying that you would move on it.” This thing has been seen by many people. The universal response has been, “This has been needed for a long time.”
There are just a few, four or five men perhaps, who are still trying to trick people in their “craftiness of deceitful scheming.” And they are right where God wants them. They have rejected the Word; now they are being dealt with. They were drawn out. “Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are alone.” You were drawn into it, and now you say, “What is God going to do to me?” I will just weep for one fact—that you have turned your heart away from the only Living Word that could have been your salvation. Isn’t that judgment enough?
I have moved more like Moses. Don’t write me off yet; I seem to have passed Mount Nebo and missed for now that final appointment (Deuteronomy 32:48–52). God looked on me and said, “Let that be My Joshua.” And those who are talking about their being the Joshuas and Calebs coming forth are not. They are Korahs and Absaloms. They are the ones who would murder God’s anointed because they do not want to hear His Word. They would stop it any way they can. Jesus said, “Your fathers murdered the prophets and you build the sepulchers to them” (Luke 11:47). But don’t build a sepulcher to me because I am not dead yet! I have a feeling that I am a little bit more alive than most of you.
I may have some serious second thoughts about this Word, but when I opened up, something began to flow out of me which was God’s anger and hatred against those who have come against His Word and against the channel who spoke it.
It is very necessary for me to emphasize that I am not being vindictive, because I am not the issue. The issue is the Word that is coming, and I am zealous for the Lord and for His Word. What has happened to me has been because God had chosen me for a channel, as Jesus said, “If they receive My Word, they will receive yours” (John 15:20). It is the same thing. Therefore, if you had heard the Living Word, you would have received me too.
Where do we go from here? The work in the printed Word is forming in the churches. In the southwest area they are being trained in editing and in different areas of working in the Word. But more than that, they are learning how to absorb the Word, how to minister it, what to do with it. Fantastic things are happening. I do not know whether to call it an apostolic company or not. I do not know exactly what to call it, but many real strong ministries among the brethren who are walking in such humility, such dedication, such sacrifice are actually becoming, without any human planning, a mobile unit that is designed to see the Word of God flourish in every church. We are always moving from one place to another.
The Word has to have free course in the hearts of all of our people (I Thessalonians 1:8; II Thessalonians 3:1, KJV).
It cannot ever be that there is too much focus on any one man.
I am preventing people from putting me on a pedestal. This is the very thing that I presented to the brothers but a few still want their pedestal. They want the praise that comes from men, and they want that influence and privilege that comes with it (John 5:44; 12:43).
God is leveling all the ground in the Kingdom. The mountains are being brought low and the valleys are being filled (Isaiah 40:4). The little people who thought they were in a valley or standing in a deep hole are finding that they are standing on the same level ground with the “king of the mountain” who thought he ruled all that he could see. The mountains are lowered and the valleys are raised and everyone is standing on equal ground. Each one is to be an oracle of God to speak His Living Word.
One thing we should clarify for these sheep who say, “Yes, we can see this, but how do we take our encouragement? How do we go forward in this work in the Word?”
First, get a picture of what God has been doing for you. God has not been putting you in a corner. He has been putting the tares in a corner. They are the ones who are being bundled. The wheat is being gathered into the garner (Matthew 13:30). This fire that has been coming has disturbed people. But I think the people of God ought to rejoice and say, “That fire is doing a lot of necessary things in all of us.”
We need to nail down in our own hearts what the fire is. The fire has been that the Lord has allowed the tares to be planted among us, and they have grown up and began to speak these lies, the craftiness in deceitful scheming. And as it says in Ephesians 4, it was a real test to see whether we really cleaved to the apostolic Word and the divine order that God set before us or not. We have been shaken in the thing; God has shaken all things, but He is leaving us a Kingdom that cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:26–28). He is leaving us a revelation of that Word that has gone deeper because of the testing that God has placed on our hearts.
The sheep have to be healed through the voicing of this message, because they are the ones who have been injured by the workings of these Korahs in their midst. They are the ones who could have the scars and feel, “We have been ripped off by them.” All of us have to see that it was allowed by God that the tares be sown in the field, because that really is what made the wheat strong. And this period we are in is a time of healing for the sheep. It is a time of blessing and release for them from every bit of influence that has come from these who have turned away from the Word and have tried to restrain them from feeding on the Word or their growing in this Word; they have tried to stop the sheep from being bonded to the vessel of this Word. Now the sheep have freedom to have all of those things; but there will also be a deep dealing of God in their hearts, as there has been, that brings them into this maturity which is spoken of in Ephesians 4. We have to see that it is necessary.
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. I Peter 4:12, KJV.
This has not been a strange thing that has happened in the walk. It has been the testing of God so that our faith could really be strong and we could be bonded to this Word and locked into all that God is putting before us.
If we considered ourselves only a movement, we would have been very weak. We never could have seen any of the glorious Gospel of the Kingdom go forth, because we were honeycombed with weakness. We would have been no different than the rest of the religious world system: toes of iron and clay that cannot cleave to each other (Daniel 2:41–43). The tares and wheat may look alike and act alike, up to a certain level, but the wheat is the life of the world. The wheat is the seed that is going to go forth. The tares are not. The tares are only a weed that parades as something real.
The separation had to come. The Word has really been the fire; it started the whole thing. Jesus said, “I came to start a fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?” (Luke 12:49, KJV.) It was kindled. And we who are living in this day should not say, “Well, who started this?” God kindled it when the Living Word started coming forth years ago. But it took a while for the tares to develop to the place where they could be dealt with.
This passage in Hebrews 12 has been made real to us so many times in these past years: See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.” Hebrews 12:25–26.
We go on to read that this means He will remove the things which can be shaken. That is why every one of us has gone through a shaking. The people who can be shaken are taken out, but also the wrong things within us, the sheep, are shaken out. Many of the people have had their heads put on straight and their hearts set right and their spirits focused on God through all of this that has happened to them. As we read in Hebrews 12:27: “We go through this so that the things which cannot be shaken will remain.”
Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12:28–29.
Once again the fire comes into it. Instead of saying, “Well, thank God I came through this terrible holocaust,” say, “Thank God that the Word started the fire, because when I am tried I will come forth as pure gold (Job 23:10). My faith will be like gold tried in the fire that comes forth to the glory and honor of God.”
In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. I Peter 1:6–7.
That is what God is bringing us to. I have never seen so many people breaking through to such a high spiritual level as we are seeing now. We should all be so encouraged. Live in that Word. Remember that this separation of tares has largely run its course. Soon it will be over with. God really has done all things well.
One thing that is so important for all of the wheat to realize is that they have been dealt with as sons (Hebrews 12:7). That has to be a deep revelation to them. When you are under the influence or under the authority of someone who turns out to be an Absalom, you feel, “Now, why did Brother Stevens let me go through this if he saw this all the time? We kept reaching out for help. We kept wanting to be released from this.” And yet, you never did step in, pull the people out, and solve all of their problems. It was the same in the parable of the wheat and the tares. They wanted to go in and pull out the tares, but the master stopped them and said, “No, you can’t, lest you destroy the wheat” (Matthew 13:27–29).
We also could have been destroyed had there been a wrong protection from this craftiness and deceitful scheming, from this wave of doctrine that tried to toss us to and fro. Because we have been under the influence of it many times or have been exposed to it, we have developed a strength. You have ministered to us like a father and made us go through the things that would make us strong. Now there can be nothing left in our spirits that would say, “Well, we should not have been exposed to all of this. We should have been protected from it.” Had we been protected from it we would have been destroyed. Now, our bond with the Word and our bond with the vessel of the Word is a pure thing; it is a deep thing, and nothing is going to shake it. Nothing will move it, because now we are coming forth into the maturity.
For years I had prayed for the pastors and elders in one church to be unified. Now, all the reports from there cannot make me do anything but rejoice. There are problems there, I know, but those problems are largely centered in just one or two. But the reports keep coming back to us about people standing strong in one accord. Let them hold steady. Let them walk in unity. For there is one thing that is true: they have reached a spiritual level and unity that they could never have attained any other way. Nothing could have brought forth the will of God and the maturity like the path God has chosen. God is a consuming fire; He is throwing matches everywhere (I Corinthians 3:9–15). But it so happens that He always ignites a bundle of tares.
If we have made it through this testing and have learned what God wanted us to learn, then we are going to have a keen perception to hear the voice we should hear and to be very hard of hearing to the voice that we reject.
There has to be that balance in us as we come out of this dealing which God has given us—that we are able to discern between the true and the false. An attribute of the sheep of the Kingdom is that they hear the Lord’s voice and no other voice will they listen to (John 10:3–5). There has to be that discrimination. Not only is there an ability to hear what the Lord has to say through the divine order and through the brothers He has given to speak the Word of the Lord to us; but also, automatically, because of the dealings of God, we reject the lie. That is what God has brought.
Mainly we learn to discern what is a lie. If you go duck hunting, you usually bring along a duck call. Those things can almost seem to sound more like a duck than a real duck. And when someone is blowing a duck call to catch a duck, he does not have anything else in mind except a good dinner. He wants to blow that device so well that a duck responds and gets shot down.
What God is doing now for the sheep is developing that inner ear to where they hear the voice of the Shepherd, but a stranger they do not follow. God is teaching His people something that is an irreplaceable miracle in their lives—that they will know His voice and follow Him (John 10:3–5, 27). The leading of the Spirit has to be such that you will not follow the trickery and the lies, the lying in wait to deceive (Ephesians 4:14, KJV). No matter how good it sounds you will not follow. They can sit there and quack all day, but you will say, “That’s not a duck. That’s somebody with a shotgun.”
We could come out of this, saying, “God was unfair to me by putting me through this.” But back in the Garden, God gave Adam and Eve a Word and then He brought Satan, He brought the serpent to tell them the lie (Genesis 2:16–17; 3:1). Time, after time, we read in the Scriptures that whenever He brought the Word, the next thing He brought was the lie to test the Word.
The minute you go down to Egypt and say, “Pharaoh, I have a Word from God,” and you throw down your rod, there are a group of magicians around who can create an illusion that looks like the same thing. And they say, “We can do it too!” The only thing is that God’s snake will swallow up all the magicians’ snakes (Exodus 7:8–12).
It is really important for the sheep to realize that the chaos that has come has been the perfect will of the Lord.
It has been the prelude to creativity. The creation started with chaos (Genesis 1:1–2). It looks as if the Kingdom will start there too.
The Word God gave about position triggered off this whole thing. God was wanting to destroy the Church Age corruption and the way we had created these positions where craftiness and deception could hide under the guise of religious respectability and the guise of being a Word from God. In many places, in fact in most of the churches, there was not the input of the real “Judas” situation, but there was still the confusion, because God was undermining any openness within our own hearts to be submissive at any time to that type of thing.
This chaos has been in the churches, and they have not known at times who was really leading or what was really taking place. The churches are not being run the way they used to be, and they probably never will be. And the blessing of God is upon us because we are learning Him and His ways (Isaiah 2:2–3). You can find thousands of well-run churches in the land. But the real mark of success is not a well-run church or a well-organized church. The mark of success is the sons who are coming forth to hear His Word. That is what we rejoice in today.
People used to go to church to hear someone interpret for God. They could not hear God themselves, but they felt a nice warm glow, so they thought, “That man must really be speaking from the Lord.” They were not exactly sure.
But you see, the Lord is eliminating the middle man. The days of the Kingdom grow more and more toward one pattern: “They will not go out and say, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least to the greatest” (Jeremiah 31:34). It has to be that we come to know His voice and to hear Him.
Another day is coming—not that all was wrong before; it just was not as good as what God is doing today. There are many people who say, “I used to like the old way, and the old style of things. I don’t understand this new.” No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better. Luke 5:39, KJV. And maybe it is. Maybe it has had time to set itself up in very acceptable forms of ministry. Then God says, “Hey, are you coming to church?”
“Yes, Lord, I’m here.”
“Okay, I am going to speak.”
“I don’t see the people here You usually speak through.”
“Well, I will speak through you tonight; how about that?”
This is a tremendous thing that is happening. If we would just see it we would become greatly excited and say, “This is such a tremendous thing happening! Who is He going to speak from next?” You see, the people are required to hear. And it is not that they must only accept certain channels, because those channels have not always been that reliable. They are learning that God is creating an ear to hear. In I Kings 22:15–18, we read about a prophet named Micaiah who gave King Ahab of Israel a wrong word. And the king said, “Now stop! How many times have I told you to just give me a Word from God.” Even though it was going to mean hearing a prophecy of his death, he had to hear the right thing (I Kings 22:16–35). I think that the people are no longer wanting to hear a pleasant word. They want to hear the Word! So God is saying, “You are going to hear it. With your own ear you are going to hear it.” This is what we have been waiting for. It is what we have always wanted—but not very much, not at this price that we may have to pay for it. When you go through the baptism of fire you always think, “It’s terrible!”
We have had first-hand experience with how position can be that which the spirit of Satan hides behind. We had to see this. We had to see a few of the men turn against the Word of position and become Judases and betray the whole thing. This had to be, that we might truly know the insidiousness of the religious system and the church system we have been under. This revelation coming right now is such a Word of liberty. It is going to put the whole picture together so that there can be a rejoicing in the land, a rejoicing in the hearts of the sheep to persevere into the great days that are ahead.
Someone said, “This sounds so total, so devastating!” But remember, in Hebrews it says, “God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love which you have done, and which you do in His name” (Hebrews 6:10). I rejoice that some of those men have quite a few years behind them in which they have served God, but nevertheless each step in God may require of you a dedication that was not that necessary on the level before. And it is tragic when some say, “I have already defined the walls, the perimeter of my dedication, and this is not included in it.”
Watch, however, these young people who come forth with such a tremendous spirit of sacrifice and dedication.
“Not me. You’re not going to take away my security. You’re not going to take away my ownership of things and people. You can’t do that. My security requires it.”
It is amazing how insecure are the men who say that. If their trust had been in God, at the beginning of their ministry they would have said, “I will leave all to follow You, Lord.” And they would say as I have said after many, many years of ministry still: “I will leave all and follow You.” It has to be an irrevocable thing that you do in dedication to the Lord, that you say, “I will follow You, Lord! And tomorrow if You say, ‘Follow Me’ again, I will leave anything that You have given me today. It doesn’t matter. I have made an irrevocable dedication to be a bondservant of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Saying it once when you are young is not good enough, because the Lord doesn’t accept tenure. If it is not an ongoing declaration, it becomes invalid.
The only seniority in the Kingdom that is of any value is the Ancient of Days. All the rest of us are only beginners.
Even after having done the will of God you are yet an unprofitable servant (Luke 17:10, KJV).
That’s it. None of us can point to the hundred or so merit badges we have won. We can only say, “Thank You, Lord, You let me run in the next race. Thank You, Lord, I’m not sitting on the benches. Thank You, Lord! I can still fight!” We are coming to the time we will find that everyone in these Kingdom churches has a sword in his hand.
When the intercession is finished, we will not say, “It was a little crack crew of intercessors out there that did it. Look how they prayed! Just a handful of them moved mountains. They changed the whole world.” It will not be that way. People everywhere are being drawn in. They are really believing God. There are people who hear evil reports and they do not react to it. They just send a letter saying, “We are standing with you; we are blessing God and believing for resurrection life.” They are not moved, because they are ones who, when this thing is over, will look at their sword and see that it has blood on it too.
The interesting thing about this is that the Holy Spirit has not been moving exclusively in one particular area. We have been receiving reports from people in different places. And we are finding that these people are so tuned into the Spirit of the Lord that as we experience things in the Lord here, they are experiencing and tuning into the very things which the Lord is revealing to us. In fact, as these different brothers call us to learn the guidelines for intercession, we will mention something and they will say, “That is exactly what I was going to speak to the people about!” or, “That is what we are already doing here in tonight’s service.” They are not separate from us. The Lord is putting the same sword in their hands as He is putting in ours.
That in itself is a testimony to the correctness of the Living Word. The Word is working just what we want it to work. There is not going to be a group of eminent or elite people, a hierarchy, an “apostolic company,” as it were. We are all going to know the Lord from the least to the greatest (Jeremiah 31:34). That principle of not having to tell someone to know the Lord because we will all know the Lord is the greatest testimony to the fact that not only is the Living Word not dying, but it is increasing in effectiveness. The constant accusation so many of these Judases have is that the Word lost its anointing two or three years ago; or on such-and-such a date the Living Word ceased to be living. But the fact that it is producing such a universal spirituality, such a universal ability in the sheep to hear the Word, proves them wrong. If these Judases would evaluate the progress in the sheep they would see how wrong their actions were. The spirituality of the sheep who are coming forth is the testimony against them.
A man with a position does not like that, however. Position does not trust people who have any protection at all. It is like the story by Hans Christian Andersen about the emperor’s new clothes. At the end of the story, a little child stood up and started laughing because the king was naked. That is basically what is happening now in the Kingdom. That nakedness has been there in the false ministries and the men who have moved as a position without an anointing. The sheep are beginning to resound in laughter over something that was a big farce. And it is being exposed as being a big farce. it never had reality at all; the people go free from the bondage of having to kowtow to some position that was an oppression.
Let’s get this point, because we have a good parable in that. I have listened to some of these men (by some, I mean two or three) who were reluctant to believe that the people were not just completely with them and supporting them. The rude awakening for such men is to realize that the sheep know the voice of the Lord a lot better than they thought, while these men do not even know the voice of the Lord; they do not have the revelation of it.
This is the thing that bothered me when I made trips back to the Midwest. Time and time again, the leader’s description of what the people were saying was not true. In reality, the people were saying the exact opposite. People do not want to be under bondage to a position. Many have sent me petitions, saying, “Take this church over, please!” I have received letters and affidavits and everything imaginable from people stating that they simply cannot handle anything like what has come in positions. And yet, the arrogant leader still struts around saying, “The people are really with me.” They are not with him! God has taken the sheep and He is putting them under the right shepherds. That is the thing to rejoice in.
I would despair if I believed that my life was so ineffective that this walk would not be dealt with by God at this stage to separate the tares from the wheat.
It would be the greatest tragedy to live your life and hear from God, to have a pure Word, and to see that it did not have any practical expression, any reality in the people’s hearts, but was still in a mingled thing of iron and clay (Daniel 2:41). But the greatest reward of my life has come in the last three years: to be able to walk with God and see this Word so effective. I can remember times in the past of being assaulted in the night, times of such intense battle; and I would awaken people to intercede with me. Now we have awakened in the night and our spirits have gone into the battle with a joy and jubilance. Afterwards, we could experience victory after victory. For many nights we couldn’t sleep for rejoicing, we couldn’t sleep for the blessing of the Lord that is breaking forth. It is a fantastic happening.
It is as though your life were just starting. Your ministry really was to work with the prophets and to bring their maturity. But first you had to raise up the sheep to the level where God could shake them and bring the separation so that you could have something to work with; because your ministry has always been to the prophets—bringing the maturity and the finishing work to their spirits. Now God is shaking out every bit of the chaff and is separating the tares from the wheat. Now there is the basic raw material for you to really start working with to see the prophets brought forth. The promises since the time of your childhood are just starting for you. The ministry really is just beginning in its fulfillment.
The thing I notice too is that the teaching is different right now. There is a whole new level of truth! And it is so practical. It is so amazingly spiritual. You are not hearing something that is only theory; but you don’t know how to walk in it.
The Word now is not coming simply to be heard; it is a Word coming to be walked in and obeyed. It is like the story in John 6:48–68. A multitude of people who were following the Lord had been so caught up in the Word that He was bringing and in watching the miracles He was doing. Then He “dropped a bomb on them” by giving them the Word that they had to eat His flesh and drink His blood. Suddenly, they all departed from that scene because they could not handle that Word. They left the Lord with just the choice few who were walking with Him. And, of course, He put the question to them: “Are you going to leave also?” So Peter answered, “Where can we go? You have the Words of life.”
It is becoming quite apparent that the Word we have received is the Word of life which does have that quality in it to bring forth exactly the Kingdom of God. It is producing it. We are moving into the days of fruitfulness. We are moving into the days of the fulfillment of those Words which came so many years ago; it is no longer ahead of us. It is coming into being; it is taking place now. We are seeing the emerging of sons beginning to express that quality of the Word that is producing the Kingdom of God. And it is right now. We are seeing it beginning to take form in the Word that is coming. It is the most exciting time. It is truly a beginning of days. It is the beginning of something that was in the mind and the heart of God. It is in administration for the fullness of time, for the revealing of Christ (Ephesians 1:9–12). And that administration is here. It is happening now.
It is right now. The disciples said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Well, Ephesians 4 says the same thing. “To whom do you want to go—to the trickery and the deceit’? Do you want their word?” (Ephesians 4:14.) The people are finding out, by the Word, where the reality is. As a result, they are seeing its fulfillment. They are seeing their own maturity; they are seeing the ministries come forth in it. And as they watch the others they wonder, “What happened to them? They used to have what was a pretty good word.” It is one thing to have a good word; it is another to have a Living Word that is going to produce and create in the hearts of the people. The days that were prophesied for a whole generation are coming to pass now.
I feel that there should be a voicing of healing to those who have suffered during this time.
Amen! Let’s agree together.
Lord, we proclaim a healing to those who have suffered in these times, where confusion has devoured them up, where the perplexity over things has caused them to withdraw, to lose confidence in Your leading. We minister healing now from the Lord. In Your name, Lord, we reach out in the Spirit to all who have suffered and have been ensnared in these times; we speak life to them. God restore their confidence. Your Word shall once again lead them and direct them in the ways of the Lord.
We share the Word that came to us. One of the brothers prophesied to me from Joel 2:25: “I will restore to you all the years that the locusts have eaten.” That hit my heart as a true Word, because that was what had been taking place then and since that time even on a greater scale. And we prophesy the same thing to these people. Though it seems that the vineyard has been destroyed, it has not been. The Lord says that the rain is coming, the blessing is coming. The Lord will restore to them all of the years (Joel 1:4, 16–20; 2:23–27). We claim that promise. Restore all the years, every bit of it, so that devastation was just the prelude to perfect fulfillment beyond our expectations.
And we voice confirmation to the perception these sheep have had all along, because so many of them have known the truth. They have known the Word, but because of being set under an oppressive situation they were forced to submit to something they really did not believe in. But we bless those who saw it all along. You were right. We bless these sheep with an awareness that they were right all along and that God was dealing with them and their perception was not off. They were seeing the problems correctly, but it was a test that God was putting them through. We bless them that God show them how far along they really are. They are a long way into being the prophets and the sons of God. They are not off lost somewhere; they are moving in the revelation God wants them to have.
We ought to make a tape entitled, “How Does A Tare Look At Things?” However, an important thought here is, “How does the true wheat look at things?” How does a good stalk of wheat look at the tares that are trying to suck the life and strength from the soil which belongs to him and keep him from growing into what he ought to be? How does he look at it? We have to commend these people. They put up with the tares as long as God wanted. They cannot look back and say, “Oh, I must have made a mistake sticking around those tares.” No, they were doing the will of God. God would not put His hand to the tares until it was time.
Yes, and we loose them from the false guilt and the self-condemnation that was constantly heaped on them because they knew what was right but they were restrained from voicing it. We erase the guilt from their hearts. We loose them into freedom and liberty.
It is not going to take a long period of time for us to be healed. We have a right spirit because we see what God put us through. No man, no individual put us through it. It was divinely inspired of God in each one of our lives that He put us through exactly what we needed to be matured into His sons and into the wheat that would be garnered in. We declare that there be a quick healing, and we declare that there will be a healing and a release from any negative influence that has come through the enemy. Let there be no conditionings in out thinking, no conditionings in our relationships, but just a total, intense seeking after the will of God in this hour.
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. Jude 24–25.
God’s dealings will bring out what is in your heart; it may surprise you yourself.
Faith is a determination to believe God’s Word; rebellion is also a determination to not believe that Word.
Doubt can be an evidence of a lack of faith; but unbelief and rebellion is a rejection of the Word God spoke.
All persecution seems to be very personal; actually the basis of all persecution is the rejection of God’s Word, not just the oracle who spoke it.
No one can play king of the mountain after the mountains are brought low and the valleys filled.
Both the wheat and the tares must confess, “The fire of God is doing a lot in all of us.”
God’s sheep know His voice, and they are beginning to know the difference between the shepherd with a crook and the shepherd who is a crook.
The Great Shepherd gives the sheep a double blessing: a victory banquet with the defeated enemy present.