The whole purpose of the Day of Atonement was that there should be the goat of removal (“azazel” in Hebrew). The high priest laid his hands on the goat and confessed his sins and the sins of the people over the scapegoat, then they led it out into the wilderness. It was done, as we read in Hebrews, every year because it was only a type of something to come; there was no permanence to it. But the Lord comes so that by ONE sacrifice He may perfect forever those who are being sanctified (Hebrews 10:14).
Perfection was what God had in mind, not just saving us so we could slide through and barely make it. God wants to bring us into a state of total, absolute perfection. This is almost repulsive to the human nature at first; it is also repulsive to the average Christian. When you talk about perfection he says, “We all have to sin a little bit every day.” But this is not true. The announcement that came in Matthew 1:21 was, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” And again in the first chapter of John, the first announcement given by John the Baptist was, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He takes sin away.
We are living in a generation when we ought to think of these things, for the coming of the Lord will trigger off a number of events, including the raging of Satan, who knows the time is short before he will be put into the abyss. Principalities and powers will be brought down and broken. Sin will be removed, until the inclination of the people will be upward: “The house of the Lord will be established above the mountains, and all the people will flow into it” (Micah 4:1). There will be an upward gravity spiritually, instead of the downward pull we have known. We are looking forward to this, and the Word says that everyone who is looking for His coming purifies himself, even as He is pure (I John 3:3).
Now in order to make this plain, I am going to give you the true and the mystical interpretation of the fourteenth chapter of John, because that is exactly what Jesus was talking about when He gathered His disciples together and told them He was going to leave them. He said, “In a little while you won’t see Me, and then again you’re going to see Me” (John 14:19). It was language very difficult to understand, and the King James version furthered a wrong interpretation by its translation of John 14:2—“In My Father’s house are many mansions.”
In this atonement message, I want you to understand this is what the Holy Spirit is working in your life: to remove from you every imperfection. But don’t consider it a negative state; He is working to bring you up to a certain dwelling place. Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places… John 14:1–2.
Let’s stop thinking on human terms of different mansions. You say, “The way I’ve been living, I’ll be lucky to get a little cubicle up there—but I know who will probably get a three-story mansion.” This passage is not talking about the natural plane. It is talking about something else entirely.
In John 17, at the end of His prayer, Jesus talks about coming into His glory, the glory that He had with the Father before the foundation of the world. Chapters 15 and 16 speak of learning to abide in Him. The sixteenth chapter deals with how the Holy Spirit is given to bring you into this place, to guide you into all the truth, to take all that Christ has and manifest it, or make it real to you. He is not talking about how you are going to move into a mansion, but about a spiritual state the Holy Spirit will help you into. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. John 14:2.
You might say, “Wasn’t everything created at the dawn of history?”
No, this talks about a spiritual abiding place.… If I go and preapre a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. John 14:3. This is the objective. Those mansions and dwelling places were not the objectives for the disciples. “In My Father’s house there are many different abiding places where I want you to come, and where I’m preparing a place for you.” How does He prepare it? He ever lives to make intercession for us to save us to the uttermost (Hebrews 7:25), that where I am (the spiritual level I am on), there you may be also. The place where the Son abides with the Father is where you can be!
Where I am-The word am is a verb of existence, to be, to have existence. It is a present indicative and declares something which is occurring while the speaker is making the statement.
As we keep His commandments, as we go on and obey Him, He tells us, “Then My Father is going to love you, and My Father and I will make our abode with you. You will find, son, that you will be lifted up and you will dwell with the Father and Me” (John 14:23).
This is the abiding place He is talking about, far above the different levels or abiding places that people sometimes settle on. He says, “Come on up to the divine country. Where I am, there you may be also!”
He wants us to be walking with Him! He says, “The glory that Thou hast given Me, Father, I have given to them that they all may be one” (John 17:22).
(I think we need to read John 14–17 all over again.) He said, “I’m showing you this; now you know the way where I’m going.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going; how do we know the way?” Jesus made it very simple: … “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “No one gets to their mansion”—no, that is not what He said—“No one comes to the Father, but through Me.” John 14:4–6.
The greatest thing God has for us is represented by the Feast of Tabernacles: God dwelling with us, with all of His glory. Jesus told the Father, “I have given them the glory that We had, that they may all be one. And the world will believe that Thou hast sent Me.”
He says, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also (Why? “Because We live on the same level); from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how do you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; otherwise believe on account of the works themselves.” John 14:7–11. Jesus is making it very plain. We are going to come to the Father.
“Where is the Father? We thought He was off in glory someplace where all those mansions are.”
No. There are different abiding places, but they aren’t that far off. God is with us right now. He wants to fill us with all of His fullness now. He isn’t that far off. The atonement was to bring us into that purity; but more than just the elimination of the negative, it was to open the door for people to live with God. When atonement is described in the ninth and the tenth chapters of Hebrews, the whole idea is, “Now He has opened up a new and a living way!”
The reality of what was done almost two thousand years ago will come in this generation. The veil was rent from top to bottom, and a new and living way was opened into that highest plane of the presence of the Father, that we may abide there. That is what Jesus was saying: “Abide in Me. Come on, live in Me. There are many dwelling places; if only you would realize it, if only you would live in Me, if only you would come up higher in the spirit realm.” It is not a matter of distance; it is a plane. It is a removal of everything which defiles. It is a removal of all that prevents revelation. “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you.” John 15:7.
Do you know what it is to live in that realm? Most believers don’t know. They touch upon it occasionally, but God is opening up the Living Word to us in this day and He is leading us. There is a level of leading in God that we are going to attain to by the grace of God. This is not some sanctimonious thing; it is not some move where we will get off into some spiritual orbit and forget everything else. The very prayer that Jesus made at the end of this passage proves it. “Father, they are in the world. Keep them in the world, but not of it” (John 17:15).
The Day of Atonement is the removal of everything that contaminates, every response to the world, to the conditions round about us, to the nature of sin. The Day of Atonement was not, “Oh, Lord, I lied. I cheated. I lost my temper. I lusted. I coveted.” That is only the beginning. The idea is to remove everything from us that makes us such earth-bound creatures. We have a trip to make, and that trip is into the Father’s heart. How are we going to get there? He is the way, He is the truth, He is the life!
There are many abiding places; but where the Son is, in the heart of the Father, He says, “I’m making a place for you that where I am, you may be also. You can live there; you can be a part with Us.” Do you see it?
In these last days, God is opening up the reality of what the Lord Jesus Christ provided for us. But don’t get the idea that this means just the mechanics of everyday living with God—I have to read my Bible and I have to pray. Now, I’d better listen to a tape.” That is wonderful, but don’t stop there. You must get yourself into the Spirit where you are walking with God, going deeper and deeper into His heart.
What will this mean? It will mean the greatest witness that the world has ever had of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “Father, I give them the glory that We have, that they can all be one and that the world might believe that Thou hast sent Me” (John 17:21, 22). You must see the facts of this: there is yet to be the greatest witness of the gospel of the Kingdom, from a united Church walking in glory.
Will that include all of the churches? No, this witness will be a Remnant, and maybe it is even a remnant of the Remnant. God is not limited to save by many or to save by few (I Samuel 14:6). Joel prophesied that there will be deliverance in the Remnant whom the Lord God shall call, that whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Joel 2:32).
“Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; otherwise believe on account of the works themselves. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. John 14:11–12.
Does this make sense? “Now, you’re going to do greater works than I’m doing because I’m going to the Father.” It makes sense if you listen to what He is saying! Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you.”
That is the key. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I’ll come again.” Don’t do wrong to this by saying that this is just speaking of the Lord’s coming again. This has been the purpose all through the Church because He said, “You see Me and you don’t see Me, and yet in a little while, you’ll see Me again.”
I believe as the disciples went about, they were constantly aware of the presence of the Lord because He kept telling them, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” He was not only with the Father, but He is, in a unique sense, with us, and He committed the Holy Spirit to us to guide us and lead us into all the truth (John 16:13), and to bring us up to that place in the Father.
Everything the Holy Spirit is doing, everything that Jesus is doing is to bring you out of that old life, that old nature, those old limitations, right up into the Father. “Now,” Jesus said, “you are going to do greater works than I’m doing because I go to the Father. I’m going to the Father and making the way for you to come.”
There must be a new relationship between us and the Lord. There must be a growing discontent that grips us and throws us into fasting and prayer and seeking God as no move of history has ever known. There is a higher level to live on. There is a place close to the heart of the Father where we can live.
Why will there be greater works? Not because the people themselves are more worthy, but because, “I go to the Father in that unique sense as a representative preparing a spiritual place for you and Me to fill.” It will come.… Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. John 14:13.
That is a big statement, but you know it hasn’t been true in your life. You have asked for many things that you didn’t receive. Sometimes you didn’t even receive an answer to your prayers. You were ignored; you didn’t get “no” or even “wait a while” for a reply. But in this coming level, you will abide in Him, and ask what you will and it will be done.
The greatest promises we have are in these chapters in John 14 through 17. “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” Jesus is always coming back to that spiritual relationship between Him and the Father because this is the place we are coming up to. There are many abiding places, but the place He has prepared for us is with the Father. There must be disciples who will reach that place, where “If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” That’s a pretty big statement.
How will all this be accomplished? It must be accomplished through the faith of people who believe the Word in simplicity and say, “Good, we see the veil being taken off the Word; we see God explaining something to us and it is attainable.” You must always believe it when the Bible says that something is practical and that it is possible to attain. You believe, and then you start in.
The Word must disturb you a great deal; just about the time you are comfortable in a walk with God and think you have it made, the Lord brings a word to you that makes you even wonder if you have even started in a walk with God! I want you to know that you have started, but don’t get the idea that you have more than just a good beginning. I believe that the prophetic community is only the fulfillment of the Feast of Trumpets.
The Day of Atonement is now upon us and the Lord is bringing the goat of removal to take everything out of the way. In all of this passage in John, Jesus is saying, “If they keep My words, they will keep your words” (John 15:20). We are coming to what the early Church had, only it will be doubly so. No one ignored them; they didn’t even finish their sermons before someone yelled, “Hey, what shall we do to be saved?” (Acts 2:37). How do you like that kind of an interruption?
I don’t like what they did to Stephen, though. They stoned him to death before his sermon was over. They didn’t give him a chance to finish it. Riots were the order of the day. When the Holy Spirit was outpoured upon the Gentiles (Acts 10), Peter said, “Of a truth I perceive God is no respecter of persons.” They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Peter said, “I guess we’d better baptize them. Who am I to withstand God?”
God is doing with us just as He did at the beginning. Things kept happening then because the Word was alive, and they are happening now. The Word is coming, and it is creating something in us. For the first time in the history of the Church, to hear is to become. What is going to happen in this? It will continue right on.
An electrifying time is ahead of us. But the greatest experience will be that of tabernacling with God. The Feast of Tabernacles really represents that; it represents God removing everything out of the way and then His glory coming down and tabernacling with us.
If the great experience of the Holy Spirit happened to the Church on the day of Pentecost, if our Lord was crucified at the time of the Passover, isn’t it logical that the glory will become real to the people of the Lord, that the atonement will come also on the specified time as a mark, as a sign and a wonder, “Here is the fulfillment”? Someone will stand up, like Peter, who said, “This is that which Joel spoke of” (Acts 2:16). Today they will say, “This is that which the Feast of Tabernacles talks about. This is that which the Day of Atonement was to mean!”
The reality of what was done almost two thousand years ago will come in this generation. The veil was rent from top to bottom, and a new and living way was opened into that highest plane of the presence of the Father, that we may abide there. That is what Jesus was saying: “Abide in Me. Come on, live in Me. There are many dwelling places; if only you would realize it, if only you would live in Me, if only you would come up higher in the spirit realm.” It is not a matter of distance; it is a plane. It is a removal of everything which defiles. It is a removal of all that prevents revelation. “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you.” John 15:7.
Do you know what it is to live in that realm? Most believers don’t know. They touch upon it occasionally, but God is opening up the Living Word to us in this day and He is leading us. There is a level of leading in God that we are going to attain to by the grace of God. This is not some sanctimonious thing; it is not some move where we will get off into some spiritual orbit and forget everything else. The very prayer that Jesus made at the end of this passage proves it. “Father, they are in the world. Keep them in the world, but not of it” (John 17:15).
The Day of Atonement is the removal of everything that contaminates, every response to the world, to the conditions round about us, to the nature of sin. The Day of Atonement was not, “Oh, Lord, I lied. I cheated. I lost my temper. I lusted. I coveted.” That is only the beginning. The idea is to remove everything from us that makes us such earth-bound creatures. We have a trip to make, and that trip is into the Father’s heart. How are we going to get there? He is the way, He is the truth, He is the life!
There are many abiding places; but where the Son is, in the heart of the Father, He says, “I’m making a place for you that where I am, you may be also. You can live there; you can be a part with Us.” Do you see it?
In these last days, God is opening up the reality of what the Lord Jesus Christ provided for us. But don’t get the idea that this means just the mechanics of everyday living with God—I have to read my Bible and I have to pray. Now, I’d better listen to a tape.” That is wonderful, but don’t stop there. You must get yourself into the Spirit where you are walking with God, going deeper and deeper into His heart.
What will this mean? It will mean the greatest witness that the world has ever had of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “Father, I give them the glory that We have, that they can all be one and that the world might believe that Thou hast sent Me” (John 17:21, 22). You must see the facts of this: there is yet to be the greatest witness of the gospel of the Kingdom, from a united Church walking in glory.
Will that include all of the churches? No, this witness will be a Remnant, and maybe it is even a remnant of the Remnant. God is not limited to save by many or to save by few (I Samuel 14:6). Joel prophesied that there will be deliverance in the Remnant whom the Lord God shall call, that whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Joel 2:32).
“Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; otherwise believe on account of the works themselves. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. John 14:11–12.
Does this make sense? “Now, you’re going to do greater works than I’m doing because I’m going to the Father.” It makes sense if you listen to what He is saying! Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you.”
That is the key. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I’ll come again.” Don’t do wrong to this by saying that this is just speaking of the Lord’s coming again. This has been the purpose all through the Church because He said, “You see Me and you don’t see Me, and yet in a little while, you’ll see Me again.”
I believe as the disciples went about, they were constantly aware of the presence of the Lord because He kept telling them, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” He was not only with the Father, but He is, in a unique sense, with us, and He committed the Holy Spirit to us to guide us and lead us into all the truth (John 16:13), and to bring us up to that place in the Father.
Everything the Holy Spirit is doing, everything that Jesus is doing is to bring you out of that old life, that old nature, those old limitations, right up into the Father. “Now,” Jesus said, “you are going to do greater works than I’m doing because I go to the Father. I’m going to the Father and making the way for you to come.”
There must be a new relationship between us and the Lord. There must be a growing discontent that grips us and throws us into fasting and prayer and seeking God as no move of history has ever known. There is a higher level to live on. There is a place close to the heart of the Father where we can live.
Why will there be greater works? Not because the people themselves are more worthy, but because, “I go to the Father in that unique sense as a representative preparing a spiritual place for you and Me to fill.” It will come.… Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. John 14:13.
That is a big statement, but you know it hasn’t been true in your life. You have asked for many things that you didn’t receive. Sometimes you didn’t even receive an answer to your prayers. You were ignored; you didn’t get “no” or even “wait a while” for a reply. But in this coming level, you will abide in Him, and ask what you will and it will be done.
The greatest promises we have are in these chapters in John 14 through 17. “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” Jesus is always coming back to that spiritual relationship between Him and the Father because this is the place we are coming up to. There are many abiding places, but the place He has prepared for us is with the Father. There must be disciples who will reach that place, where “If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” That’s a pretty big statement.
How will all this be accomplished? It must be accomplished through the faith of people who believe the Word in simplicity and say, “Good, we see the veil being taken off the Word; we see God explaining something to us and it is attainable.” You must always believe it when the Bible says that something is practical and that it is possible to attain. You believe, and then you start in.
The Word must disturb you a great deal; just about the time you are comfortable in a walk with God and think you have it made, the Lord brings a word to you that makes you even wonder if you have even started in a walk with God! I want you to know that you have started, but don’t get the idea that you have more than just a good beginning. I believe that the prophetic community is only the fulfillment of the Feast of Trumpets.
The Day of Atonement is now upon us and the Lord is bringing the goat of removal to take everything out of the way. In all of this passage in John, Jesus is saying, “If they keep My words, they will keep your words” (John 15:20). We are coming to what the early Church had, only it will be doubly so. No one ignored them; they didn’t even finish their sermons before someone yelled, “Hey, what shall we do to be saved?” (Acts 2:37). How do you like that kind of an interruption?
I don’t like what they did to Stephen, though. They stoned him to death before his sermon was over. They didn’t give him a chance to finish it. Riots were the order of the day. When the Holy Spirit was outpoured upon the Gentiles (Acts 10), Peter said, “Of a truth I perceive God is no respecter of persons.” They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Peter said, “I guess we’d better baptize them. Who am I to withstand God?”
God is doing with us just as He did at the beginning. Things kept happening then because the Word was alive, and they are happening now. The Word is coming, and it is creating something in us. For the first time in the history of the Church, to hear is to become. What is going to happen in this? It will continue right on.
An electrifying time is ahead of us. But the greatest experience will be that of tabernacling with God. The Feast of Tabernacles really represents that; it represents God removing everything out of the way and then His glory coming down and tabernacling with us.
If the great experience of the Holy Spirit happened to the Church on the day of Pentecost, if our Lord was crucified at the time of the Passover, isn’t it logical that the glory will become real to the people of the Lord, that the atonement will come also on the specified time as a mark, as a sign and a wonder, “Here is the fulfillment”? Someone will stand up, like Peter, who said, “This is that which Joel spoke of” (Acts 2:16). Today they will say, “This is that which the Feast of Tabernacles talks about. This is that which the Day of Atonement was to mean!”
Let’s go onward into the greater visions of what God has for us. Every time a person stops short of this a smug complacency comes over him. No matter what people have had, they become pharisees within one generation because they suddenly become content; they have accepted something in their flesh that coexists with God. They refuse to do violence to it, until the sin is taken away, until the thing is removed.
Sometimes people seem to feel they are actually moving in unbelief if they acknowledge sin in their lives. “Well, I don’t believe I’m really saved if I acknowledge I still need a real deliverance in my life, a real work of sanctification to be accomplished. I don’t dare talk about that.” They want to believe that when they said, “Jesus, Jesus” everything happened to them. In a sense you have opened the door for all this to happen, in token He has sealed you for it, but there is something more you must receive—the actual reality of it. You must be gloriously satisfied with what the Lord has become to you so far, and yet at the same time you must be completely discontented; you must yearn and hunger after righteousness. Believe that God has something more for us than we have ever seen before.
“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper.” John 14:16. Paraclete is the Greek word used here. It means, “one called to stand alongside of you.” It is translated “advocate” in I John 2:1; “We have an advocate.” Today we use “advocate” as a synonym for attorney, someone who stands alongside you to make intercession. This is what we literally have: a helper, one to stand alongside of us. And we also have an Advocate with the Father; one who stands alongside the Father. Christ will stand alongside the Father, and we are here with the Holy Spirit to stand beside us.
The Holy Spirit will … be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. John 14:16–17.
Did Jesus do that with the disciples? Yes, He did, but this does not take away from the great advent of the Lord’s return. It does mean, however, that you must believe in the presence of the Lord. If you don’t believe it you shouldn’t take Communion, because this is a way of practicing His presence, of taking of His provision as a living thing. And as we do that, He is standing alongside the Father; He is the Advocate with the Father for your sins and my sins. In the meantime the Holy Spirit, our Advocate, is standing alongside of us. With all the lawyers on our side, no wonder the Judge is giving us a break!
After a little while the world will behold Me no more; but you will behold Me; because I live, you shall live also. In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. John 14:19–20.
That is the mystery—for individual identity not to be the reality among individuals, but the one entity of Spirit—the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and us—all one, all being made to drink and to be baptized into one Spirit (I Corinthians 12:13). This is what that verse means: all are being submerged into one Spirit.
The scapegoat, the goat of removal, actually took away on the Day of Atonement the sins of Israel. It was a collective thing; it was for everyone’s sin, for everyone’s limitations, because they were not what they were supposed to be as the Israel of God. They needed the goat of removal so they could come and stand before God. They did this every year, but not with a reality to it, because the substance of that prophecy was to be with us. By one sacrifice He forever perfected those who are being sanctified (Hebrews 10:14). We are being brought into that oneness.
You cannot read a message like this and go back to a shallow interpretation of these verses in John. Over and over they are pointing to this one thing: the Holy Spirit, our Advocate, is standing alongside, but He is going to be in you. The Advocate is on the inside. He will even do the talking when you come before govenors; He takes over.
We are being drawn up, up, up. It is not a matter of distance, but a matter of spiritual plane. This means the world will have another view of God. This is what Paul was talking about in II Corinthians 4:6–7: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that others will see the light of the face of God in Christ in us.”
The treasure is in earthen vessels. We shall say just as Jesus said, “You mean that you have seen me, and you haven’t seen the Father? Believe because of the words I am speaking, the works I am doing.” As He dwells within us, in that oneness this will happen again. God is going to have His people, and they will be a delivered, holy, effective manifestation of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The Word will be fulfilled which was given to us in Ephesians, “Be filled with the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). This is a command to us. You say, “You are talking about utopia.” I know, and maybe for awhile there won’t be many who will listen. What He said, “If they kept My word, they will keep yours,” this will become true.
If you keep His word and love Him, you will listen to the words that I am speaking to you, because these words are not mine but the Lord’s. And they may set something before you that will cause you to walk away and say, “We must be practical. We must come down to the practical, everyday world.” Maybe, in your thinking, you do have to. Of course, what you think is what you are limited to—you will be limited to it.
God grant that a few of us will hear this word and know, Lord Jesus, that You went to prepare that level, that place with the Father, and that You are receiving us unto Yourself so that where You are, there we will be also. Grant that we shall say as the Apostle John, As He is, so also are we in this world (I John 4:17). There is a place we can dwell in; the Scapegoat took away all our reasons for living other than in Him
This is the greatest thing that can happen to us today. To no longer be an earthbound creature. Some of us still want to live for the passing things just a little (just enough to make you miserable. I don’t want too much of You, Lord. I’m afraid of becoming too spiritual, afraid of following this thing to its real conclusion—a walk with God.”
There will be some who will abandon it, but some will say, “Lord, I heard the call. I listened to Your drawing me. There will be a people, Lord. As You have a Kingdom that is prepared, so You will have a people who are prepared for the Kingdom. O Lord, they will not be a people who shall judge according to the sight of their eyes, or the hearing of their ears, but a people who will wholly follow the Lord their God, with His word abiding in them, living within them, until they speak His word and they do His works, the greater works.” They will know their God, and they will be strong and do exploits, Daniel said. I believe we can be that people.
I believe God can plant a hunger in your heart for some of these things. These are truths which might disturb some people; these are truths and revelations which you must pray to perceive. “O God, give me ears to hear Your word. Give me a heart to perceive what You are trying to bring forth in my life.” “In that day you shall know that I am in the Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” John 14:20.
But then Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me (this is the answer), he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him.” John 14:22–23.
This is exactly what God is saying to you today. How is it that He is going to come and reveal Himself to us and not to the world? Why won’t the world be able to see this? He said, “The key is: people will love Me. They are going to keep My word, and that will be the way into the heart of the Father. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our abode” (John 14:23).
“He who does not love Me (and that is the whole world—they don’t love God) does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me. These things I have spoken to you, while abiding with you. But the Helper (this one who will stand alongside us), the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. John 14:24–26.
What is He saying? , That you have the Holy Spirit with you now to bring revelation upon this word, to teach you all things, to guide you. He says, “Come on now, I’ll stand alongside you. I’ll help you when you pray, ‘Oh, God, give me that atonement experience. Let the goat of removal take these things from me.’ ” The Holy Spirit will help you as you confess your need, your inadequacy, and as you confess that you have come to the end of human existence having any meaning to you, because you want to abide in Him.
You do not abide in the world and abide in Christ at the same time. You are in the world, but you are not of it. The world is not your abiding place; it is not a level of life for you. Your level of life is going to be the Father; it is going to be Christ. You are going to abide in Him.
Your level of living must be something different entirely. You are in the world, but you are not of it; it is not your level of life. And you “love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world. And the world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth” (I John 2:16, 17). He doesn’t just live; he abides in Him, forever.
The Holy Spirit is saying, “Let Me guide you. A place has been prepared for you with the Father. Come on, let Me abide with you; let Me draw you. Let Me live with you.” The Holy Spirit is wooing us to a much higher life. There will be some in this generation who will not forget this word. They will contend for it, and they will have it. It is worth it.
O Lord, we have no other goals but Thee. We count all things but loss. We are pressing toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God, that high calling of God in Christ Jesus. The things that were gain to us we count as rubbish.
As many as are mature, let them be like-minded. The third chapter of Philippians lays it out for us. Come on, come higher. This is why the Holy Spirit was given. (And all the time they told you that you had received the Holy Spirit so you could talk in tongues once in awhile.) No, He was given to help you and to guide you into ALL the truth (John 16:13). He takes of His fullness and manifests it to you. “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, He shall take of Mine. The Holy Spirit shall take of Mine and shall manifest it to you” (John 16:15). That is what He has been doing to your heart.
This is a word that is revolutionary and yet so basic to the coming great revelations of the Lord. It is so basic to what God wants of all of us. Lord, seal this word to our hearts, but do more than just let it be a memory of a message. Create it in us, O God. Do this thing within our very being. There is a place with You that we know we have not yet attained. There is a level where we can abide in You; we know it is there. The Holy Spirit bears witness to our hearts that none of us need to live on the lower spiritual level we are living on. We can come up higher.
You have prepared that place for us to live, Lord, and we are going to live there. Your Spirit will bring us into it. We don’t know how, except that You said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one can come to the Father, or to that place, but by Me.” Lord Jesus, we love You. We open our hearts wide to You; we lift our hearts to worship You.