In these days of restoration God is bringing forth a fresh emphasis upon the Scriptures. It is always interesting to watch the Scriptures that He highlights time and time again, such as Ephesians chapter 4, Hosea chapter 6, James chapter 5, Joel chapter 2, Acts chapter 3, and Isaiah chapter 61. All of these speak of the times of restoration. We keep hearing these Scriptures over and over again, but always there is a little difference in what is emphasized.
We have read Hosea 6:1–3 many times, but usually we have related it to how the Lord would come to us as the former and the latter rain (verse 3). This verse is quoted in Joel 2:23 and also in James 5:7. As we read the passage this time, we will not be referring so much to the latter rain as to the amazing ministry in the end time of healing.
Hosea 6:1–3: “Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him. So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.”
I am concerned about this because the Scriptures and the prophecies about healing have come repeatedly. In fact, a prophecy came recently which said that God was going to heal the wound of His people and that there would not remain even a scar.
This is saying a great deal, because we have been through what we refer to as devastation, but we have not understood the necessity of this devastation.
We have not known why God had to take people who had heard a Living Word, who had received the truth, and put them through a process of devastation. But the answer is so obvious: they did not have spiritually what was necessary to take them through the days ahead.
God does not want any false illusions. We do not want people to have a feeling that they are going to make it when they can’t. So the Lord puts devastation before us as our course. We could call it a work of the cross.
“And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake shall find it.” Matthew 10:38–39.
We identify it as what God does by putting us through an identification with Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection; but actually, it is a little more than just that. The work of the cross is one part of it, but God never does a positive thing without also doing something very constructive in the way of judgment. Wickedness is being dealt with. Many who were walking unashamed, actually feeling that they could do anything in the world and violate the Living Word that has come for so many years, are being judged.
The illumination of the Scriptures has taught us about divine patterns and about what God wants in the divine order that He is restoring. Now, of course, the hirelings can be identified. A hireling is one who places the property or the money that he controls, or places possessing people that he controls, ahead of really feeding the sheep and leading them in the Living Word that God is bringing (John 10:11–13).
There are many wounds to be healed; and now God is going to heal those wounds, and He is going to put the sheep under shepherds after His own heart.
“Then I will give you shepherds after My own heart, who will feed you on knowledge and understanding.” Jeremiah 3:15.
The Lord spoke to my heart: “Prophesy this Word in the land! Prophesy judgment on those bodies of people who are following the hirelings. Unless they loose themselves from that bondage which has been imposed upon them by the hirelings, they will be judged with the hirelings. They will be scattered sheep who will never possess their inheritance.”
There are many wonderful people who are involved with just a few hirelings. Unless they look to God and turn away from that lying thing which comes from the hirelings, that evil thing which the hirelings build up to protect their own case and to defend their own possessiveness over the Kingdom of God—unless they turn away from that they will be destroyed.
The hirelings have taken their stewardship to be their own private possession. They have considered their ministry to be actually the achievements of their own ability. They have taken the people as a possession. That is Babylon. They are hirelings of Babylon, and those who cling to the hirelings are doing so to their own destruction.
If they have allowed deception, it has been truly because they have allowed it. They have not loved the Living Word and put the Lordship of Christ first; therefore, the lordship of their human lord and ruler over them is a thing that they submit to. Woe unto the flock that submits to the hireling’s rule. Sooner or later the hireling and the sheep that follow him will perish together.
Do not worry, little flock—you have turned your heart away from the hirelings. And as we look to the Lord in the Word, we see that there is a time of healing coming. God brought us through all of this devastation. The days of healing and impartation are at hand. We see more done in one hour in a service now than we have seen accomplished in months of preaching in the years past. As we lay hands on people and heal them, we see that the faith is in them; it is there. They have had a Living Word from God. They have had a meeting with God. They are not going to turn away.
By the laying on of hands that healing comes; it is truly a healing. And I think we have to take a very realistic view of it. Man did not devastate us or wound us. Hosea 6:1–2 says: “Let’s return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He is the One who raises us up.”
You say, “Why did this devastation have to happen?” John chapter 11 gives us a key. Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, yet He did not go there until Lazarus had been in the grave for four days. When Jesus told the people to remove the stone over Lazarus’ tomb, Martha said, “Lord, by this time he stinks” (John 11:39). The putrefaction, the corruption and decay, had already set in. But that did not mean it was too late. There could not be a resurrection while the man was still alive.
Likewise, we have been looking for resurrection life to come. And although I did not understand it at first, I realize that I have been through a death; I went through more of a death than I ever dreamed possible. It is one thing to die physically and then be resurrected. But I watched my hopes, my expectations, everything God had laid in my hand, every good blessing He had ever given me—everything—be thrown into jeopardy. Then I watched myself lay it all on the altar and die to it, only to find now that resurrection life is here.
Jesus said, “I lay down My life that I may take it up again” (John 10:17). No man took it away from Him; He laid it down, and He could take it up. In this devastation many of you found that you seemed to lie down and die. But realize this: if you believe it, you can get out of your coffin. It is resurrection morning. Resurrection life is beginning; and before we are through, we will find that the Spirit that raised up Christ from the dead will quicken our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11). We are going to find this resurrection life really working for us in ways that we cannot even define or describe. There is no limitation to it. And it is all beginning by impartation and by healing.
When Jesus commissioned the disciples He said, … they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. Mark 16:18, KJV. And as we approach the Kingdom, we are so aware of how the Scriptures parallel what we are in now. All the way back through everything that was ever prophesied, it was spoken that there would be the healing ministry of the Lord, the ministry to free the oppressed.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified. Isaiah 61:1–3.
The captives are to be set free. Those who are in chains are going to be loosed. The Lord is going to release His people. This is the whole thing that God prophesied for the end time. We see that ministry coming, but the people who will move in it have to be first partakers of it. We had to go through an experience of devastation, but now watch the healing come. Watch the ministries come forth in a spiritual depth that we have never seen before.
This passage in Hosea opens the door for us to see that the healing which took place in the New Testament was necessary. John the Baptist was the last of the prophets. Jesus said, The law and the prophets were until John: since that time (since John) the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. Luke 16:16, KJV. So Christ came preaching the Kingdom. He went everywhere preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and saying that the Kingdom of heaven was right there at hand. But when He did it, He healed. Notice that! He not only preached it, but He healed the people!
From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
And Jesus was going about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people. And the news about Him went out into all Syria; and they brought to Him all who were ill, taken with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them. Matthew 4:17, 23–24.
You cannot get into a new age, or into a manifestation of the next phase of a new age, without a time of a lot of healing. You may be like a good, dependable boat that has sailed the seas many times; but there still has to come a time when that boat is put in dry dock and someone scrapes the barnacles off. The barnacles attach themselves in spite of everything, and they can slow a ship down. Maybe God needs to heal you. Maybe you need to scrape the barnacles off your hull and mend your sails. Do that, and then hoist your sails, and let’s go ahead. Let’s believe that God is going to bless, and that great things are going to happen in the name of the Lord.
One thing you must see is that this healing is so very much of the Lord. In leafing through the New Testament, we find that the Greek text has some beautiful words for healing in it. One is therapeuo (Matthew 8:16; 12:15, 22; 15:30; Mark 1:34; 3:10; Luke 4:40; 5:15; Acts 5:16). “Therapeutic” and “therapy” come from this word; therapy is a kind of healing process. There are other words for healing in the New Testament which are very good. Sozo means “to make sound or to make whole” (Matthew 9:21–22; Mark 6:56; 10:52; Luke 8:48, 50; 17:19; Acts 4:9). Once in a while the writers of the New Testament really became eloquent and used the word diasozo. Diasozo means “to make thoroughly sound, to make completely, totally whole.” The King James Version translates it, “To make perfectly whole” (Matthew 14:36), meaning that not one thing was left unhealed.
Do you feel like you need a little therapy? Then have somebody lay hands on you. Maybe you need that diasozo.
You say, “Well, there are a lot of things wrong with me. I would like to be made every whit whole. I don’t want any unsoundness in my mind or spirit. I don’t want to carry with me in my mind or thinking any defeat from what I have gone through. I want to get out of that grave, but I want to be like Lazarus. I want somebody to take those wrappings of death off of me. I don’t want to walk around like a living mummy. I want even the wrappings of death to be taken off of me. I want to be free.”
That is what this Scripture is talking about. Let’s return to the Lord. He is the One who put us through it, and He will heal us; He will bandage us, He will revive us. He will raise us up and we will live before Him.
So let us press on. For what? For victory? No, we press on to know the Lord. That is it—press on to know the Lord. Behind all of this, God is doing one thing: He is bringing you into a place where you can take the eye salve and anoint your eyes to see (Revelation 3:18), that you can begin to sense the presence of the Lord. After all, aren’t these the days of the Parousia, of the presence of the Lord? Aren’t these the days when He is to be revealed to His people? Isn’t the Lord to come?
I know that there is to be a glorious day of revelation of the Lord when every eye shall see Him (II Thessalonians 2:7, 9–10; Revelation 1:7–8); but there are also those promises in the Scriptures that He is going to reveal Himself to us, that there will be revelations of the Lord. And those days are right on us now. In fact, God is preparing a vast host of people, and the Word is not, “Lo, He is in the desert, lo here, lo there”; but we are going to find that He is right here with us (Matthew 24:26–27; Luke 17:21). The revelation of Christ Jesus is going to come to His people first. I believe that with all my heart. He is going to come to us as the rain, just gently moving on us and blessing us (Hosea 6:3). After that, then all the events of the end time will fall into place in rapid succession.
Many people are missing that wonderful disclosure which He is to give to a people whose eyes have been healed—people who have been anointed with eye salve so that they can see, and they reach into a new level. They are the ones that He is healing now.
“Well, I don’t see any of God in what I’ve gone through.”
You have gone through all of that so that you can begin to see God in your life, so that you can begin to have a revelation of the Lord in your life.
The more I get into the Scriptures on this, the more excited I become. Another passage which is so alive is Matthew 12:15–21. Verse 15b says of the Lord Jesus, And many followed Him, and He healed them all. There could not be the Christ coming to preach the Kingdom without there also being the healing which was prophesied to be part of the Kingdom. Matthew wrote so much about the Kingdom; in the book of Matthew there is no emphasis so great as the quotations from the Old Testament prophets about the Messiah, the King of kings and the Lord of lords who was to come and rule, and the signs and wonders which fulfilled those prophecies. And the primary thing Matthew did was emphasize the healing that Jesus did. We can read about it in chapters 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 19, 21. So many times this word therapeuo was used, speaking of the healing ministry of the Lord which came forth so strong. Christ came to be the King. He came to preach the Kingdom. And how did He manifest it? He healed.
… and He healed them all, and warned them not to make Him known, in order that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, might be fulfilled, saying, “Behold, My Servant whom I have chosen; My Beloved in whom My soul is well-pleased; I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel, nor cry out; nor will any one hear His voice in the streets. A battered reed” (a reed is what the scribes used for a pen) “He will not break off, and a smoldering wick He will not put out, until He leads justice to victory. And in His name the Gentiles will hope.” Matthew 12:15–21.
This is beautiful. It is a quotation from Isaiah 42. Verse 3 reads, “A bruised reed He will not break, and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish …”
Isaiah 42 is a prophecy of what the Lord was going to do. He was coming “to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, and those who dwell in darkness from the prison. I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images. Behold, the former things have come to pass, now I declare new things; before they spring forth I proclaim them to you.” Verses 7–9.
The Kingdom has to come with a healing. People have to be liberated. There has to be a deliverance. They have to get out of the prison. They have to break out of their old thinking. They have to be healed. Devastation has to end. Now the Lord says, “I am going to speak to you new things, things that you do not even know about yet; I am going to declare them to you, proclaim them to you, before they spring forth” (Isaiah 42:9).
Isaiah 42:13: The Lord will go forth like a warrior, He will arouse His zeal like a man of war. He will utter a shout, yes, He will raise a war cry. He will prevail against His enemies.
Is this a contradiction? First the Scripture says that He is not going to cry out or lift up His voice in the streets (Isaiah 42:2). Then it turns around and says that He is going to turn into a warrior, a shouting, yelling warrior who is leading His people into the war. You have to understand that when God does a work, He goes about it quietly and you do not even realize what He is doing in your life. But then in the midst of that devastation He says, “Lazarus, come forth! Come on, get out of the tomb! Let’s go! Let’s move into what God has for us” (John 11:43–44).
“I have kept silent for a long time, I have kept still and restrained Myself. Now like a woman in labor I will groan, I will both gasp and pant. I will lay waste the mountains and hills, and wither all their vegetation; I will make the rivers into coastlands, and dry up the ponds. And I will lead the blind by a way they do not know, in paths they do not know I will guide them. I will make darkness into light before them and rugged places into plains. These are the things I will do, and I will not leave them undone.” Isaiah 42:14–16.
Verse 22: But this is a people plundered and despoiled; all of them are trapped in caves, or are hidden away in prisons; they have become a prey with none to deliver them, and a spoil, with none to say, “Give them back!”
God is changing that now. He is not going to let the little sheep out there be ignored. If there has been one sin that elders, deacons, pastors, and shepherds have committed, it is that they have failed to realize that their stewardship was such a thing of accountability (Ezekiel 34). They failed to realize how God loves those sheep and that they had better love them, too. Oh, God put His fear in the hearts of the shepherds lest they fail God and come under His hand!
“Wail, you shepherds, and cry; and wallow in ashes, you masters of the flock; for the days of your slaughter and your dispersions have come, and you shall fall like a choice vessel. Flight shall perish from the shepherds, and escape from the masters of the flock. Hear the sound of the cry of the shepherds, and the wailing of the masters of the flock! For the Lord is destroying their pasture, and the peaceful folds are made silent because of the fierce anger of the Lord. He has left His hiding place like the lion; for their land has become a horror because of the fierceness of the oppressing sword, and because of His fierce anger.” Jeremiah 25:34–38.
If you are faithful, there is a crown that will be given to you. There is a crown that will be given to the faithful shepherds when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, the Lord Jesus Christ (I Peter 5:4). It is one of the great rewards that He gives to a man who takes care of the sheep.
When Jesus appeared to His disciples after the resurrection (John 21:15–17), there was one thing Peter had to hear. Jesus told him: “Feed My sheep.” He asked, “Peter, do you love Me?”
“Yes.”
“Feed My lambs, Peter, do you love Me?”
“I love You, Lord.”
“Feed My sheep.”
One thing the Lord is crying out for, and one thing that has been violated in this walk among the churches, is that the sheep have not been loved; they have not been fed. And in a few cases, they have been exploited. And when you say to the false shepherds that they cannot do that, they will break with you and turn another way. But they do not know that God separated them. God is going to give those people shepherds after His own heart (Jeremiah 3:15). That prophecy is coming to pass.
The thing that is happening now among the churches is the same thing that happened in Matthew 12. Because the Lord was healing people and casting out demons, the multitudes were saying, “This is the Son of David.” But not the Pharisees. They said, “This is done by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons” (Matthew 12:23–24), crediting to the work of the devil what God was doing through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. What did Jesus answer to that? He said, “And if I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Consequently they shall be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Matthew 12:27–28. And that is exactly what is happening.
You false shepherds and false prophets, look at the people who are moving in the greatest anointed ministry of the Word ever to come—the Timothys that have come forth. Your sons are doing it; do you want to condemn them?
There was a healing that came in the early days of the gospels. When John the Baptist went forth and proclaimed the Kingdom of God, Jesus came, healing all that were sick (Matthew chapters 3 and 4). Read the gospels again. The same thing is happening now. We are laying hands on people and there are signs following; there is healing.
The greater works are like the healing that is beginning within the Body. There is nothing as wonderful as seeing what is happening with these people who had almost given up. They are devastated; they do not know what to do. But we lay hands on them and in one moment, in one instant, that thing is done and over with and they begin to revive. The Pharisees ask, “How can this be?” Jesus said, “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Matthew 12:28. If there is even one service—and there have been many of them—in which I have laid hands on a hundred or two hundred people and they have all been changed, then it is a lying spirit which deceives you to say, “There is no Word from God.”
The impartation is coming. The Kingdom of God is coming, and you may be out of it. You may be excluded. You had better be careful. There could be an opportunity to repent and turn back and see what God would really do by that Living Word which you have forsaken. That same Living Word could be your release.
Jesus continued: “Or how can anyone enter the strong man’s house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house. He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters. Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the age to come.” Matthew 12:29–32.
What does this mean? It means that you can speak against a man of God and get away with it. Maybe you could speak against the Lord Jesus Christ and get away with that, too. But be careful—if that Living Word came forth by the Holy Spirit and you begin to speak against that, you may be committing a sin for which there will be no forgiveness in this age or in the age to come.
Jesus went on to say: “Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree rotten, and its fruit rotten; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man out of his good treasure brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth what is evil. And I say to you, that every careless word that men shall speak, they shall render account for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned.” Matthew 12:33–37.
It is a strange thing that while the war is over the Word, it is men’s words that are the determining factor. If you speak a Living Word, you will survive and come through victoriously. But if your words are strong against the truth, you will perish by them. You will be judged by the words that you speak. That will be exactly the rule and measure by which you fall.
The time of healing is here. And it is also a time of judgment. It is a time when God is dealing with the wickedness of the apostate hearts, and He is finishing the work of the cross in the devastated. He is bringing impartation and healing to many people. He is even bringing judgment on whole bodies of believers who have forsaken their belief and have followed the hirelings. This is true, but at the same time remember that God is delivering the people who find buried down in their hearts that incorruptible seed, the Word of God that lives and abides forever (I Peter 1:23). The Word is springing forth and the fruitfulness is finally coming forth.
I prophesy that after these days in which God has brought us through so much, men will end up walking with God more than ever before. From now on, you will find that God will not allow the tares and the wheat to grow together any longer. He is gathering those tares into bundles, and He is going to burn them (Matthew 13:24–30).
We are looking for a new day, aren’t we? We are looking for that day of blessing and anointing that is going to loose us to walk and flow in the blessings of the Lord as never before. We are in a day of liberation. It is a day of healing. It is a day of reviving all of His work within our hearts. We are going to have to hear a lot more about this therapeuo.
The spiritual therapeutics are coming at the beginning, or the launching, of a new level of the Kingdom of God. It happened as Christ came forth in the time of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and it is happening again now. A new level of the Kingdom, a new phase of the Kingdom, is coming to us. As it comes, we become more released from the Church Age and its illness; and the wound and the hurt of God’s people is being healed. It is the Lord who said that He has wounded us but He will bandage us. He will revive us. He will raise us up. And we will live before Him. Never has the presence of the Lord been any greater or more real to a people than it will be to the believers in the days just before us.
“ ‘For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds,’ declares the Lord, ‘because they have called you an outcast, saying: “It is Zion; no one cares for her.” ’ ” Jeremiah 30:17.
“ ‘See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; it is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded, and it is I who heal; and there is no one who can deliver from My hand.’ ” Deuteronomy 32:39.
“Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him. So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.” Hosea 6:1–3.
God gives the sheep shepherds after His own heart, so that the wounded of the flock may be healed.
We press on, for victory? or to know the Lord!