We need to constantly review what God is doing. In Hebrews 2:1, 3 we read: Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.… How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation… This is beautiful, but it is ominous too—the fear lest we should let anything slip. We must be so careful to do as God directs.
The word of wisdom in this walk does not come to direct you in every trivial matter, but to tell you what to live for and how to live for it. We cannot prostitute the great thing God is bringing forth in the earth by pulling it down to our level and trying to use it for personal needs. Often we do not even know our own needs.
Kindness must have two sides to it: the kindness that reaches out with understanding and the kindness that comes up and hits you right between the eyes, so to speak, when you are on the wrong track, and says, “That’s all; step back.” No longer must ministry be taken up with trivial matters, but we will do the business of the Kingdom.
There must have been many people who came to the Lord, looking for things to be set straight. One man came and said, “Lord, make my brother divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus said, “Who made Me a divider over you?” Someone else said, “Lord, I’ll follow You, but since my father is dying, I’ll have to wait and bury him first.” Jesus replied, “Let the dead bury the dead.” It sounds cold and heartless, but until we understand that there is something more important than our own little personal problems and that God raised us up for something greater, we will suffer and agonize with those problems and be heartbroken. But one day we’ll get up, in the midst of all the rubbish, and say, “Jesus, here we are. You take us and use us.”
This walk isn’t meant to just meet a few little needs. God isn’t simply taking you out of a situation; He is putting you into one. He is bringing you into His perfect will. How He is hammering at you and crucifying you, bringing you down to the place where you will say, “Yes Lord, Your will be done.” Jesus never tried to talk anyone into anything. He refused to be involved with small things, for He knew that those who were ready for the Kingdom had to come to the end of themselves. God has brought us to the place where there is something really alive in the way He is dealing with our hearts. He is preparing us to live—really live—for something significant. My heart can hardly express the greatness of the thing we’re in, and if we are not careful, we can slip into a rut.
We are so close to the coming of the Lord. This is the time when the Lord is raising up a people who will be the instruments of judgment in His Hand. He is starting by judging us first so there will be no offensive thing in us. He is exposing everything in us to ourselves. Unless we are so self-deceived that we cover it over, God will make us understand what is in us. Instead of looking for some reason and always asking, “Why? Why, God, did You do this?” say instead, “What is it, Lord?” Find out what is down deep within yourself, and let Him deal with it, because you are scheduled to become an instrument in His hands.
Of all the generations that have lived since Adam, none is more important than this one, right now. Everything is hinging on it. We are living in a very important hour. What can happen within the next few days, or weeks, or within just hours! Something is soon to happen! We’ve been prepared and the countdown—9, 8, 7, 6, 5—is here! We know something is ready to blast off! God has His hand on us, moving on us by His Spirit. We are almost to the end of the old. Say, “Goodbye!” Slam the door on it! Bury it, for the new is coming! Refuse to be distracted or fearful. Nothing will happen to you, except that He will take you like chaff and wheat to the threshing floor. Things will be separated from you, and you will come out refined. When He finishes grinding you and beating you into fine flour and baking you into bread, you will taste as sweet as the communion bread.
God didn’t raise us up to pamper us. He raised us up to be even vicious, without human sympathy, yet full of divine compassion. He raised us up to be Joel’s army. Nothing will be able to stand before us. As we go forth, everything before us will be as the Garden of Eden and everything behind us as a desolate wilderness. At the same time, there is the promise that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, for in Mount Zion shall be deliverance and in the remnant whom the Lord God shall call. Oh, what a dual ministry we have: of mercy and of judgment. We do not yet fully know our destiny. No people on God’s earth have ever been raised up to do this. And whom did He pick? You—unworthy you! The lame, the halt, and the blind; the poor of this world, and the foolish, to confound the wise. Why did He do it? He raised them up to show His wisdom, His mercy, and His righteousness in them. He will come against the conceited Pharisees who are boasting themselves to be adequate when they are nothing, and bring a judgment that starts in the house of God and moves on through the earth.
We know we are not worthy, but God will do it through those whom He chooses. It is a day for humility. That is now the order of the day. Just humble yourselves under the mighty hand of the Lord and say, “Lord, we’re living in a day such as the world has never seen before, but it has a golden promise.” When has there ever been an opportunity for people like us to have such meaning and effectiveness in our lives? The opportunity is ours to do greater works than Jesus did, to do exploits, signs and wonders, to even see the forces of nature bow in the judgments on the earth and the miracles of deliverance. Who are we to do things like that? Are we greater than Peter or James or Paul, that these things should be done by us? Why has God chosen us for it? I don’t know. But this is the hour for these things to be done.
Someone is going to break the principalities and powers over our cities in the name of the Lord. I’m asking for this state of Texas to be redeemed, and I believe God will do something drastic. as we intercede for cities the Lord will shake them from one end to another. We should seriously consider sending a company of apostles and prophets to go through Washington, D.C., and curse some of the forces of evil there and bring them down. It may sound fantastic and wild, but why not? Who is going to do it? No political party can do it. What will we do? Rise up in the name of the Lord and speak the word He gives us. It can be done; this is the day to act.
This is no longer a day for putting up a sign and a tent to have a revival; that day is past. But we could put out a sign and say, “We’ll have some judgment,” because that is what God is doing. He is judging and dealing, chastening and crucifying things in us and bringing absolute creative change. That has never happened in the revivals of the past, even with their groanings and agonizings and thousands of people turning to the Lord. Those were just stirrings, stirrings, and more stirrings. We don’t need to give the old corpse a shot, or roll it over to make it blink its eyes two or three times, trying to convince ourselves that it isn’t dead. We need resurrection life and that’s what we will have.
We dare not let our spirits flag. We are raised up for a purpose in God, and we are fulfilling it. There will be more waiting on the Lord, more prayer, more divine direction. Step by step we will follow God’s strategy. We are going to put a worm in the gourd of the religious world, because that is what God is telling us to do.
The expression, “worm in the gourd,” comes from the book of Jonah. God made a large gourd to grow up and shade Jonah when he was sitting in the hot sun, pouting and wishing he were dead. And just to show him what it was all about, God let a worm come one night and smite the gourd so that it withered. Many people today are hiding under their religious protections. They are isolated and withdrawn, rebellious and uninvolved, undedicated and filled with self-pity, just sitting under their gourd trees. We are going to be the worm in their gourd, to smite it down and then let them sit and burn in the sun of judgment, in the realization of what they are.
God will expose the deceptions in anything and everything that calls itself religion. Everything that some of these religions teach about self-realization and the glorious thing that is in you is a lie. Everything they are claiming can only come by the miracle of regeneration and of divine impartation. A new divine nature must be given unto you. It cannot and does not come in any other way. It is only by illusion, by self-deception and the help of devil power that people come to believe in some nobility or divinity of the human nature. It is not so. Jesus said to the Jews, “You are of your father, the devil, and his works will you do” (John 8:44). With all his deceptions, Lucifer, that archreligious spirit of all religious spirits, comes to convince people they are something, to make them religious. And they can go to hell with all their religion. God comes to tell us, “I will shatter the illusions, the darkness, the screens behind which people hide.”
We are coming to the day of light! We are coming to the day of truth! Gross darkness is upon the earth, but the path of the just shines more and more unto the perfect day, and we are coming into the greatest revelations the people of God have ever had. We shall see the end of this age and the birth of the new.
Since the Spirit is always keeping this vision of the Kingdom before us, let us read from Isaiah 11:1–10: And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord; and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither decide after the hearing of his ears; but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth; and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his waist, and faithfulness the girdle of his loins.
And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the root of Jesse, that standeth for an ensign of the peoples, unto him shall the nations seek; and his resting-place shall be glorious.
It’s coming, isn’t it? And we are being prepared for it.
Isaiah 32:1–8: Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in justice. And a man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, as streams of water in a dry place, as the shade of a great rock in a weary land. And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken. And the heart of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly.
The fool shall be no more called noble, nor the churl said to be bountiful. For the fool will speak folly, and his heart will work iniquity, to practice profaneness, and to utter error against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and to cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. And the instruments of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the meek with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right. But the noble deviseth noble things; and the noble things shall he continue.
One more passage, Isaiah 35:1–10: The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon: they shall see the glory of the Lord, the excellency of our God.
Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not, behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God; he will come and save you.
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing; for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the glowing sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the habitation of jackals, where they lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.
And a highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for the redeemed: the wayfaring men, yea fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast go up thereon; they shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads: they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Seven hundred years before Christ, Isaiah saw it; and we are almost three millenniums closer. It is right before us!