I would like to explain a principle about things that you should not know about, that you must not know about or they would be to your own hurt. Certain knowledge can be too big a burden for some people to bear.
One woman who could not be told a secret, would evaluate it as either too good to keep or not worth keeping. It was too much of a burden on her. The knowledge would weigh on her and she never could keep a secret.
In counciling with couples having marriage problems in which one partner will come to me privately and confess an infidelity. Then he or she will say that they must confess it to the other. I’m not advocating secrecy, but I try to weigh carefully the nature of the people who are involved.
If the Lord Jesus Christ has taken care of the problem and I know that the other party cannot handle that knowledge, I will say, “You cannot excuse yourself and the burden that you have to carry by laying it upon your partner. Keep your mouth shut; repent before the Lord, and see that it never happens again. I know that your partner could not bear that kind of knowledge.”
You might wonder what kind of a pastor I am by not leading people to confess to one another. When I know it is the kind of knowledge a person cannot handle, I will not give it or allow someone else to give it. I have listened to almost every kind of problem that a person can experience. There are those in the congregation who are quick to confess anything because they sense that I have an understanding heart, but they also know that many people would be tormented and haunted the rest of their lives if they knew about it.
This is true of many kinds of knowledge. We are hesitant about seeing countries having certain knowledge, such as atomic bombs, if they do not have the type of dedication to handle that knowledge. There are kinds of secrets and knowledge that become dangerous when people learn them and do not have the development within themselves to cope with them.
Little children can also be given too much knowledge. I think it is wrong for a father or mother to teach too young a child how to use a gun or knife. A child must also be rather mature and careful before he is taught to use a skill saw. These things are all excellent within their purpose, but a person must be mature enough to be able to handle the knowledge.
In this walk with God, we have a great amount of knowledge which God had hidden from a lot of people. It is because this walk is for those who will open their hearts in maturity and real dedication to walk with the Lord. Remember what Jesus told His disciples: “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” John 16:12,13.
In connection with this, Paul wrote, And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to babes in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men? I Corinthians 3:1–3. He was saying, “I would like to give you the secrets, but I can’t do it. I have to give you the milk and not the meat because you are not able to bear it.”
Another passage that is closely related to this is Hebrews 5:11–14, which is speaking about Melchizedek: Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for some one to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For every one who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
I don’t believe God is going to open the door and let a great number of the truths we walk in reach many Christian people. As much as we rejoice in the way doors are opening; churches are coming forth, and our literature is being received, yet I want to call your attention to the fact that only a small minority are receiving the revelation of this walk. Don’t be alarmed if you find a great many churches which claim to believe in the Holy Spirit, in tongues and prophecy, yet do not open up to the truths of this walk. Such churches have prolonged the infancy of people, and the people have not trained themselves to go on with God and become mature spiritually. They can only handle milk, so that is all God will give them. God has cut it off.
Jesus said, “I have a lot of things to tell you, but you are not able to bear them.” Paul said, “I’m not able to give you this. You are not able to bear it.” If the Lord spoke in this way to His disciples, and the apostle spoke in like manner to the churches, it means that there was a discrimination on the part of the teachers to reveal to the people all that they were able to bear but no more.
One of the greatest marks of this walk is the fact that God has constantly increased our revelation more and more, and we have been able to bear it. It is because the deep dealings of the Lord have been upon our hearts; if it had not been for that, we would not have been able to receive the truths.
You may start out thinking, “Oh, teach me all the deep truths; explain everything to me that is in the Word; I want to know all about it.” And yet, the Lord keeps holding back. Sometimes even personal prophecies are held back, and you ask, “Why doesn’t someone prophesy over me and tell me what I’m going to do and where I’m going to go?” Maybe you are not able to bear it yet.
I sometimes think we are behind schedule in ministering to people and then I notice that God is holding it back. Only when the heart is ready, will the Lord start giving the flow of revelation that is deep over an individual. Why? Because a person is only able to bear so much, and that kind of knowledge can be terrible to bear.
I suppose I have been envied by some people because of the amount of revelation I have been able to move in. I am not pretentious about it. You may think it is wonderful to know some of these things. Do you think it gives me a great deal of joy and pleasure? It gives me an awesome sense of responsibility to know what I know about many of you. I find myself being driven to accomplish the things that I know you need accomplished right now, and I wonder how we will be able to catch up on this work.
If I could have completely submissive and trustworthy ministries who would not circumvent what I say, but ministries who would set about to minister the things that I see are needed for an individual, our progress would be a lot faster. There is not enough of that type of ministry. Sometimes I direct ministries to go and minister to an individual in a particular way, but when they do, the person starts reacting, and the ministries work around the word and soften it down. Eventually the whole effect is gone. The ministry has accomplished nothing and has usually hurt the situation. We patiently look forward to the day of greater and greater consistent ministry to people who need it.
You may say in your heart: “I think I can handle more revelation than I am getting.” Maybe you can, but sometimes God does not give a greater amount of knowledge and understanding because He has not seen the maturity or dedication within you to walk in what you already know. You can create a spiritual indigestion. It is like a logjam where everything is blocked. Because you are not obeying one word, all the other words of revelation are piling up and you are not walking in them. Your body must have a free flow: intake, assimilation, and elimination. There must be a continuous process of converting the food into energy and putting it into action. The same principle is true in this marvelous walk with God.
Sometimes you yearn to excel in wisdom and in knowledge, but are not eager to walk in everything with the same diligence; so suddenly you go blank and wonder why you are no longer getting the great revelations from the Scriptures. “Why can’t I understand the Word anymore? I listen to the sermons but I’m not grasping them sharply. I used to anticipate what would be said before the next sentence. Now I listen and I wake up halfway through the sermon realizing I am listening to words and none of it is registering.” If you find this happening, you need to search your heart and see if you are really walking in what you do know. God may have suddenly blocked off the revelation because you would not be able to bear anymore; you are not walking in what you do know. Can you see why the Holy Spirit, throughout the Scriptures, shows that the truth is sometimes held back, especially when men are not able to bear it?
It could be an intolerable burden if you knew all that God demands of your life right now. After I came into this walk I used to say to myself, “If I had really known what this was going to be like, I wonder if I would have been so quick to get into it?” Have you ever felt the same way? Wasn’t it good of God not to tell you everything? Now that you are in the walk and have paid the price, you can look back with gladness. No one could talk you out of it. God knew your heart and He wasn’t trying to take you with guile. He was trying to lead you on by giving you all you were able to bear; at each moment you were wrestling with all that you could handle. He knew what was in your heart and He knew what He could do for you. Line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little, that is the way the prophet Isaiah said it would be because people aren’t able to bear everything at one time (Isaiah 28:13).
May the Lord rebuke the thing in our heart that draws back from immediately acting upon the word we receive. I believe the rate of revelation would increase, there would be more personal prophecies, deeper sermons, more living active truths, more ministries commissioned and sent out, if there were more diligence to be doers of the word—not in the sweet by-and-by, but doers of the word who begin to embrace it the moment that they hear it and by the grace of God cry out to walk in it.
I wonder if you really know how to hear a sermon. I wonder if you know how to hear the word of the Lord. A living word comes, and you say, “Oh, I was moved by that!” You think about it and work at it, but the only word that really gets to you and does the job is something that you determine to act on. You will retain the word you act on. What you don’t act on seems to create a bottleneck, and it may be many, many days before the word reaches your spirit again with the force and effectiveness that it did before.
We could have a meeting with God every single day. We could be making a giant step into the kingdom every single day, if we would take the word that He speaks to our hearts and embrace it to be doers of it, right now! If we would cleave to it with all our hearts, something would happen. We would learn how to hear the word and to worship in that word, to step out on that word and to act upon it. Our lives would be a lot different.
The thing that causes the problem is not that a man does not know the truths or does not understand what he hears. He may say, “I would walk in this, but I’m confused; I just don’t understand.” If you ask him what he doesn’t understand, he may mention a Scripture about the rapture or some doctrine and say, “This confuses me.” What difference does it make whether that first resurrection occurs at the beginning, the middle, or the end of the tribulation that is coming upon the earth? “Well, I’m just confused.” So he can’t walk with God in this walk just because he doesn’t understand that?
If you are not able to walk with God, it is not because you don’t understand the rapture, or some other doctrine; you are not walking in what you do know and understand and comprehend. People who hold the truth but do not walk in it find themselves unable to embrace any more, and they say, “Oh, I’m so confused.” Are you discouraged? Are you depressed? Do you have things that you have written down in your notebooks and in the margins of your Bible, things God has been speaking to your heart that you are not really putting into action? That is where you should start working, lest you become depressed, or discouraged, or defeated along the way. Instead of waiting for a fresh, brand-new revelation to come, hasten the fullness of the truth which is coming by walking this moment in what you do know.
The one thing God tried to do at the beginning of creation was to hold man back from revelation (I think He knew what man was going to do). The Garden of Eden must have been a marvelous place. I imagine there were fruits which contained every needed vitamin, mineral, and protein. All Adam had to do was to take care of the trees. Then the Lord brought Eve along and the two of them were in complete control of everything; they owned the whole world. And God said, “You can eat anything, except of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—that tree you cannot eat of.” Satan came to push them to partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and he said, “God knows that in the day you eat thereof you will be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 2:16–17; 3:5).
Did the devil tell the truth? Not quite, he left out the most important thing. Sometimes a lie is known by the truth that it evades—the truth that it leaves out. Satan did not say that God didn’t want them to be as gods. He knew that was the whole plan; and he also knew that they would be as God in knowing good from evil. Satan left out one thing. What he failed to tell them was that in their obedience to God they would find knowledge withheld from them which they were not yet able to bear.
When they partook, their eyes were opened, they saw they were naked, and they hid themselves. In the cool of the day God came to talk with them, and He said, “Adam, where art thou? What did you do, Adam?” Adam didn’t have any excuse, but he replied, “The woman you gave me, gave the fruit to me. I ate it, and that is the way it happened.” Then Eve spoke up, “The serpent gave the fruit to me and I ate it” (Genesis 3:7–13). They began to make excuses, but the truth of the matter was that they had suddenly come into a knowledge they could not handle.
There are many people today who hold this type of attitude: “Oh, it won’t hurt them; they should learn these things early.” There are those who advocate early sexual relationships. I don’t. I believe a person, if possible, should be a virgin until marriage. Why? Because when you begin to receive that kind of knowledge you get into something that you can’t handle, and it begins to backfire in certain areas of your life. It just happens. You may call me an old fogy, and I am. In my opinion, children should understand certain things for their own welfare, but they should not be given too much knowledge before they are ready to use it.
When young people are ready for marriage, ready to use that kind of knowledge, then we should tell them everything (not just about the birds and the bees). When they are ready for it, we should tell them how to make love: how to make love until their spirits are welded together and how they can have the greatest and the most wonderful relationship God ever made for human beings to enjoy. At the right time we should teach it until they know it and can set about to be good husbands and wives all the days of their lives. When they’re ready for that knowledge, let’s give it to them, but let’s wait until they can handle it.
Sometimes knowledge can be a burden. The knowledge of good and evil came to Adam and Eve too soon. Didn’t God want them to be as gods? Yes, but He had another way of doing it. Of course, He knew the way it was going to happen. God wasn’t caught unawares; He knew. In His wisdom He was not guilty of being unaware. He was righteous in what He had demanded of them.
God has also withheld certain knowledge concerning the events of this hour. It’s a characteristic of the Father to do this for everyone. He tells us that no man knows the day nor the hour of the coming of the Lord, not even the angels, not the Son, but the Father only (Mark 13:32). Why is that knowledge withheld? It’s a knowledge that only the heart of the Father must hold. Things must run their course through the ages: they must go through century after century while God is working everything out. God is slowly but surely bringing everything to pass. The knowledge of when that final day and hour is to come must only be in the heart of the Father. But He says, “The signs and the seasons you know; these you will not be ignorant of. You will see them coming forth, but you will not be able to tell the day nor the hour (Mark 13:28–29). The purpose of this is so you will labor on with the knowledge that you have, while God withholds the knowledge that you are not yet ready to receive. The fact that I don’t know the day nor the hour of the return of the Lord doesn’t bother me; what bothers me is that I know the seals are being taken off the book. Daniel was told, “Go your way, seal up the Book for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end” (Daniel 12:9–10).
The time of the end has come, and we need days to wait on the Lord. The time has come for a greater knowledge than we’ve had; this is what I am burdened for. Are we worthy? Are we mature enough spiritually to handle it if God would suddenly reveal the secrets of the books of Daniel and Revelation? I’m not referring to all the commentaries that seem to have these books worked out but do not reveal what God wants us to have. There is a word which is going to come forth for this generation that is hidden away in those apocalyptic books. If we follow on, we will know. If we are faithful with the light we have received, He will lead us into more. Don’t be as anxious to hear new truths as you are to walk in the truths you already have. This is the best course to get to the new truths.
Sometimes people insist on personal ministry. We need to have a pure way of ministering, with the Holy Spirit calling out those who are to be ministered to instead of ministering to people who say, “Oh, I want a word. I want a word.” I have seen people offended down through the years who received a word they were not able to handle. It would be a true word, but they pushed in prematurely to get something for which they were not ready. They were not strong enough to bear it. They were not spiritually prepared to receive a word from God.
We are going to be faithful doers of every word we hear. We just don’t dare to be offended. Jesus said, “Blessed is he who will not be offended in Me” (Luke 7:23). I’ve seen people who were oppressed by a demon spirit, and when it was bound or sent into judgment they would get offended. Instead of accepting the deliverance they became sensitive. Let’s accept this word. Let’s walk in it. Let’s be faithful!
“Proverbs 25:2 tells us, It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
“In army intelligence work, often common recruits were given security clearance, and soon they had access to top military secrets. As the weight and responsibility of this settled upon them, there was a high percentage of breakdowns and neuroses among them because they were walking with burdens on their hearts which they could not share with anyone else.
“When you first come into this walk, too much revelation without a knowledge of authority and dedication can bring spiritual indigestion. Walk in what you have; walk in what you know. Be faithful to that, and the other things will be added. A house must have a foundation deep enough to sustain it.”
“This message should provoke us to love and good works. There is so much that God has for all of us. But we need to get into the will of God in the things of preparation in our lives before we can contemplate the distant mountain peaks or distant revelations the Lord wants us to walk in. The deepest thing we could do at this time is to really believe for this apostolic company to come forth. If there are ministries who are wholly submissive to the apostle, who do not seek their own private revelation, who do not waver in the face of conflict, but are wholly dedicated to transmit the apostolic word, it will be amazing the amount of revelation which will be loosed. We need to make the will of the Lord the delight of our hearts as never before and forget about doing things that may be in the future.
“Go over your prophecies and the words God has spoken to you. Come with a repentant spirit to the Lord and say, ‘Show me where I missed it, where I took a wrong step, where I took a fork in the road, where I have created a logjam and backlog in my life.’ Begin to repent, and really believe for the liberation of the apostolic ministry.
“How can we hold back the thing God is bringing forth by our own lack of dedication to walk in what God is speaking? Look over the things that God is speaking, and prayerfully look to God for Him to show you the thing that you can do in the present tense. Seek for a practical first step of obedience to the Lord and it will come forth. We don’t need to worry about the great seals, they will come. The only thing we need to worry about is making the will of the Lord the delight of our heart and coming into that perfect state of obedience.”
“When we receive a word and we don’t act upon it, it produces a callousness and hardness of heart within us, and causes us to withdraw from any further revelation so we won’t walk in anything more from the will of God. There has to be a thing of action. You can only move from the position in which you stand You can only start with what you have.
“God wants to give us wisdom in the very depths of our being. But he is not entrusting to us something that we can manipulate and use in unrighteousness. In John 7 they marveled at Jesus that He was so learned, never having been educated. But when it was now in the midst of the feast Jesus went up in to the temple, and began to teach. The Jews therefore were marveling, saying, ‘How is this man become learned, having never been educated?’ Jesus therefore answered them, and said, ‘My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent me. If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from Myself.’ John 7:14–17.
“If you’re willing to walk in the teaching, to do the will of God, you’ll know the teaching, whether it be of God. You won’t worry, ‘Well, what about a rapture?’ Neglect not the gift which was given you by the laying on of hands (I Timothy 4:14).”