Some of our visions and dreams may seem fantastic and even crazy by the world’s standards; yet many dreams have come to pass, and the people of the Lord are encouraged and are looking for the promises of the Lord to be fulfilled.
One of our dreams is to see Kingdom cities come forth and provide a type of living that will make the people of God a self-sufficient, self-contained unit, independent from Babylon’s system. Already the trend for the young people is toward communal living. Increasing numbers of young people will begin to gravitate to communities and cities where there is a living word. The Scripture tells us that people will search from sea to sea, looking for bread, looking for a word from God; and they will not find it (Amos 8:12). In one city there will be nothing, and in another city there will be rain (Amos 4:6, 7). We know that God will help us to be the places where the rain and the word come.
People are staying away from the public parks and other public facilities. The beaches are contaminated. There is always danger of rape, assault, and harm from gangs. Violence is increasing all over the land. Ten years ago people did not dream conditions would be in the state they are in today, and today no one can visualize what they will be like five years from now. People will suddenly find themselves shaken by the word that God is bringing and by conditions around them. Another way of life must be created for God’s people. It can be a good life and an inexpensive one.
The plan for Kingdom cities must be flexible so that it could be used in many different areas. Such cities could be built on land that was rather inexpensive and not suitable for farming, such as hillsides that would be easy to develop. Of course, the big problem always is to find an adequate water supply. A minimum of about forty acres would be required to put in a camp that could be expanded to take in several hundred units besides the camp facilities. Each family would be contributing toward the land, the living facilities, and the utilities they would be using. They could cut down the cost of living; and though they would work hard, they would be working for the Kingdom instead of just for themselves.
A city such as we want to build would be a self-contained town, with its own water supply, emergency power plant and generator, and cooking facilities (perhaps using wood or coal). It would be completely independent of any public utilities, in case of war or emergency. The city would include a utility area with washers, dryers, toilets and showers, a large walk-in cold-storage area similar to a locker plant, and large emergency bins for the permanent storage of a few thousand bushels of grain. We could have a wholesale buying service, making food available at absolute cost. We could buy a product in season in large quantities and bring it by truck to the storage lockers. There would also be facilities for canning. There could be a communal kitchen and dining room for those who were not living separately as families.
A small park and recreation area could be placed in the center of the city with a pool, a wading pool for the children, an enclosed therapeutic pool, volleyball and basketball courts, a picnic area, a playground, and a first-aid station. There would be a gym and a health program for everyone who wanted to enter into it.
We should plant every available space with trees, any kind of fruit or nut tree compatible with the altitude and climate. Even in times of war in the Old Testament, God said, “Do not hurt the fruit trees; never destroy them” (Deuteronomy 20:19, 20).
In the city there would be a baby-sitting service, a nursery for infants, and a pre-school for young children. In large work areas people could come and work; yet each individual would have more free time than by another way of living—time to wait on the Lord and to pray, hours upon end to read the Word and listen to tapes. The city would need a library, a video monitor, a small hall for Bible studies, and facilities where people could sit and listen to tapes. If someone wanted to master the word God has brought in this walk, he could sit and listen to the word by the hour and also discuss the things of the Lord with others and thereby learn a great deal. There could be a radio station playing the word which could be picked up through an intercom in every home. This system would not eliminate privacy. Each family would still have its privacy and be able to go ahead with the things they wanted to do, but someone would be nearby to offer encouragement.
In the days of disaster Kingdom cities would serve as cities of refuge for God’s people. They would have an emergency store of food, and God would see to it that we were able to survive. My concern is not primarily that we just survive in the midst of chaos; we must be judgment centers, sending judgment over the land by our prayers and by the authority of God. A central part of the city would be a place where prophets congregate, a place where violent prayer is made day and night.
When God’s people all work together, who knows what their efforts could do! With the creativity in the Spirit concentrated in one area, within a very short time, the ingenuity of God’s people would become evident in various factories springing forth. No longer dependent on Babylon, the believers would not be looking for a job merely to earn a pittance; with just a little money that God could loose, they would be able to create.
Very inexpensive homes could be built by using the gunnite process, on a steel framework (similar to the process by which swimming pools are built). I do not think we should plan anything lavish and expensive. We should look for ways to create a beautiful way of life, inexpensively, in the miracle power of the Lord. Our plan must be within the vision of any congregation that wants to follow it.
If a dozen families would be so dedicated that they would sell their homes and use the equities, there would be enough money to finance a project to provide living facilities for every family in their church. We are not interested in a giveaway program; none of us have that much to give. We have to create it. God can help us to build the Kingdom camps and cities. We can see that those who have come off drugs and those who have no sense of values have a fresh start. We can show them how to seek first the Kingdom of God as their sense of values. Instead of giving them a cloak of religion to put on when they go to church, we will teach them to live and to walk the Kingdom every hour of every day. Under supervision of this kind, they will make more progress in one year than they could make in ten years on their own. We will see the prophets of God come forth.
If Samuel were to come back and lead a school of prophets today, they would all be put in jail. They would be arrested for disturbing the peace or illegally congregating or having a meeting without a permit. If nothing else, the authorities would arrest Samuel for being a riot-maker or agitator because he would be disrupting the establishment. What do you think would happen if Samuel and his school of prophets or Elisha and Elijah returned and walked in on a riot? There would be a fantastic reversal of the situation. When Saul sent the men down to kill David, they passed by a school of prophets; immediately they changed their minds and started prophesying (I Samuel 19:20, 21). If a group of agitators today were trying to create a riot and they suddenly encountered a group of prophets, imagine what would happen! The agitators would forget the riot and start prophesying the word of the Lord.
We are to be a force that reverses many trends. Through prayer we can stop many things that are happening in the government and in the world. The conditions in our country today cannot be blamed on any one political party or official. It is all part of God’s judgment. Judgments are already beginning, and they are moving fast. We are not to be partakers of judgment. The best way to be blessed is to keep our hearts repentant and to keep a right spirit before the Lord. The circumstances that happen to an individual will be determined by the state of his own spirit. We are coming into that period when our state of spirit will determine what happens to us. If we have a right spirit, we will be blessed; if we have a wrong spirit, we will be open to devil power.
Your greatest defense is to have a walk with the Lord, to be submissive to the Lord, to have a right spirit before God, and to be a real worshiper. Many assaults will come against you, but they will not be able to destroy you. They will not hurt you. You shall come through them and be stronger with every step, but that will not be true of the rest of the world. They will be destroyed by the things that come against them because the destruction is in their spirits. The Kingdom starts in us, but it has to have its expression outside of us. The Kingdom is within; the word of God is within, not someplace else. “The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth, in thy heart.” We believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths, and it affects the entire condition and state within and around us (Romans 10:8, 9).
This living word will be the answer, but not because we distribute it through many books. It will be effective when we become the living word, living epistles read and known of all men, written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart (II Corinthians 3:3).
Once you begin to speak the word of God that is within you, activating it and putting it in action, you will be able to control the atmosphere, the environment, and the circumstances around you. As it was with Stephen, so it will be with you (Acts 7:54). Whether people believe your word or not, they have no defenses against it. They may resist it; but it pierces them, for it is the sharp, two-edged sword of the Spirit that divides asunder soul and spirit (Hebrews 4:12).
We do not realize the power of the word of God in our mouths. We have heard a great deal about the power of our words, of positive thinking, and of positive confession. Let us go a little further and recognize the power of positively declaring not just any word, but the word of God. Let us recognize the power of the word of God in our mouths and speak it.
God told the prophets to prophesy; and they did, saying, “Thus saith the Lord.” They did not predict disasters; they caused them. This will happen again. Prophets will speak, “Thus saith the Lord”; and the word of God in their mouths will turn loose the judgments over the whole world. More and more we will find that our services will not be religious meetings that run their course, but services in which we come together for an executive meeting. We will find out what God is thinking and hear what God is saying; then we will go out and declare it.
The centurion was commended by Jesus because of his tremendous faith. When Jesus said He would come and heal his servant, the centurion said, “Speak the word only.” He knew the power of that word. He knew that it had great authority. Authority has been given to the saints of the Most High (Daniel 7:22). The authority is there because the word of God is in you. God is making you a living epistle of the word. When you speak that word, the authority is present; and either people are broken by it, or they will endure by it.
The state of the people of the world is just the opposite of ours. Judgment is in their hearts, and they are defeated. There is no deliverance for such people; instead, there is judgment: accidents, death, disaster, etc. just waiting to happen. Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth is ready to be turned loose, because it is in them. There is great fear in the hearts of the people. They have no God, no hope; and in their unbelief, they are going someplace to disintegrate into nothing. It is the word of God in us that makes us different. In the flesh we are no different from anyone else, but God has put within us the greatest word that He has committed to any generation in the entire history of the world. There will be more prophets, more apostles, more great companies of prophets appearing in this decade than in all the past ages put together.
This is an age when anything can happen. We can build a little city, a prophetic community, where we can prophesy and see circumstances and situations loosed. We will work, creating new ways of living and inventing things with the prophetic power of God. We will stand before a problem and prophesy to it until it opens up and gives its own answer.
We must create a whole new way of life by virtue of the word of God that is coming. God’s word that is in us just does not fit in the old circumstances. Most of us are living a life that is incompatible with the word of God that is in us. That word will have to break loose and create a new situation.
Many of the people living in a Kingdom city will be going to jobs on the outside, but more and more they will create their own jobs and businesses. Eventually the city itself will be supplying all its own needs. More and more people will be working for the Body, and they will feel good about it because they will be a part of something important. It will even be a joy to be a garbage collector in a Kingdom city. Now much of the effort on a job seems pointless. A person gets a little money for it; but he must have more than money, for no one lives by bread alone. But we must live by the fact that our lives have meaning and are an expression of God coming forth from us.
We are not merely concerned about survival. We want to create prophetic centers or communities that can stand and be a greater force than all the armies of the world. We want to know how to project this judgment by word. We want to be able to come into the new level of prophecy that God has revealed. We should have a target for the week to prophesy against, so that within a week we would see it brought down. When two or three agree touching anything they shall ask, it will be done.
The Bible is either true, or it is the greatest imposition that was ever placed upon people’s imagination. When two or three agree, what they bind on earth can be bound in heaven (Matthew 18:18–20). This is true, but it is yet to be done. The problem is that Christians are scattered and are barely surviving in the midst of a hostile environment. We need to get the people of God together; and though they are in the world, they will not be of it (John 17:11, 14). They will stand forth as the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13).
We must think about the Kingdom of God that is to come. The Kingdom of God is within us, and we are expressing it. The real Kingdom that is coming will take over all other kingdoms, but it must be expressed. Paul wrote in Philippians 3:20, 21, “Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be likened unto His glorious body, by the power whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself.” Moffat’s translation gives a better picture when it says, “We are heaven’s colony.” God is planting us as little sections of the Kingdom; He is putting a little leaven in a portion of meal. As we prophesy and move in God, the old order will collapse round about us. We must be the instruments of God to bring into manifestation the principle described in Revelation 11:15: “The kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.”